The Regenerative Technology Alliance Announces Strategic Alliance with IRB Provider

PORTLAND, Ore. - Oct. 27, 2014 - PRLog -- Portland, OR. October 20, 2014. The Regenerative Technology Alliance (RTA), a global provider of standards and certification for the emerging fields of regenerative medicine and science, has announced a strategic alliance with Institute for Advanced Medicine (IAM), a pioneering non-profit organization dedicated to providing transparency, education and advocacy for the field of regenerative medicine. As a result of the merger, the RTA will assume the day-to-day management of the IAM’s activities, including the HHS Registered Institutional Review Board (IRB) today.

“IRBs play a critical and essential role in the advancement of science and medicine,” says David Audley, Chair of the RTA. “The IRB business of the IAM fits perfectly with the standards and certification focus on the RTA. Combined, we believe that we will have a comprehensive approach to help advance the field with an eye on transparency and patient safety,”

The IAM IRB was formed to fill a need in the evaluation of safety of new and innovative medical therapies developed and advanced by physicians. All too often, physicians and other medical innovators have limited access to the oversight of formalized ethics and review boards. Historically, IRBs have been housed in hospitals and academics settings that tend to be bureaucratic, cumbersome and distrustful of clinically driven treatments and therapies.

The IAM IRB is composed of medical, scientific, legal and community leaders who have extensive experience in patient safety and the promise of regenerative science and medicine. The IRB committee meets monthly to evaluate new proposals for clinical studies. Studies are evaluated on the purpose and scope of the studies, the relation to current practices, scientific support from peer-reviewed literature and whether or not the treatment poses any undue risk to patient safety.

The RTA will maintain this IRB as part of its mission to provide transparency to medical innovation worldwide and to the emerging field or regenerative medicine. “By maintain this review committee,” continues Audley, “The RTA will bring a new level of professional oversight to clinical studies in the US and abroad.”

In addition to the review of protocols and study designs, the IRB requires all studies provide comprehensive informed consents, condition specific follow up forms and process for collection of long-term safety data. Combined, the IAM believes that it provides the most complete and comprehensive approach to the evaluation of investigational treatments and innovative clinical studies.

More information, including applications for review by the IRB, can be found at www.regen-tech.org/IRB.

About the RTA

The RTA is a 501(c)6 and is supported by annual membership fees to help us advance our import mission of bringing peer oversight and transparency to the field of cell-based and regenerative medicine.