The greatness of a person isn’t always so obvious upon meeting them. They might seem quite average on the outside, yet their lives are all about greatness. While that might sound a bit like a verbal maze, it reflects the feelings after a short period of time with Dr. Anthony Atala. One part of his enigma would be his argument over my perceived greatness. When you talk him, you don’t know what to admire the most, his brilliance, his dedication, or his humility.

So now that I’ve expressed my awe of meeting the man, let me get a bit into why you might share it with me.

Just like Neal Armstrong’s first step on the moon is also a step to the intergalactic travel we envision maybe centuries from now, Atala’s work at Wake Forest Baptist Center for Regenerative Medicine is the progression of the medical miracles that might also be performed in the future. The only difference being we might not have to wait so long. I’ll paint the rosy scenario first just to whet your appetite, and then talk about the man and the effort that might make it all a reality.

Dr. Anthony Atala in his lab at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

If a member of the military comes home alive from battle, we are always grateful. If he comes home physically less than what he was, our gratitude is tempered with our sympathy. Just how great would it be that, instead of learning to use a prosthetic arm, that soldier from his own reserve of stem cells can simply grow another? OK, simple it’s not, but possible, yes; that’s the goal. At least that’s one of the goals.

How about nervous systems that can repair themselves after damage, or a brain that can heal itself and prevent the tragedy of Alzheimer’s? Think of burn victims that might be able to regenerate skin or severely injured victims of any kind of trauma imaginable having their organs replaced by ones with no fear of rejection because they are actually their own.

I don’t want to suggest this is going to happen overnight or, for that matter, Dr. Atala would probably be the last to commit to any timetables. But those are only some of the proposed uses of his work. I’m confident he would temper it.

The story doesn’t actually start off all that dramatically, but I guess they rarely do. Dr. Atala is a native Peruvian, and he comes from a large family. He went to medical school at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, and applied for a fellowship in urology at Harvard. His intent at the time was to be a pediatric urologic surgeon. He was chosen for a new two-year program that included research to a higher degree expected.

He wanted to decline the invitation, but as the story goes, his wife intervened and he was on his way to Boston. I mention this because, I think, it makes Dr. Atala have something in common with all of us. The spotlight may fall our way now and again, but we all know who’s really in charge.

Before he went to Boston, he had already delved into the world of pediatric urology. He came up with a procedure that prevented the backward flow of urine from the bladder to the kidney. It’s a relatively common problem. What was significant about the procedure is that he did it with the patient’s tissue rather than synthetic balloons previously used.

After the cells are isolated from amniotic fluid or placenta, they are expanded in the laboratory and are then coaxed into becoming a particular cell type.

At the time, there wasn’t much faith within the medical community that this would work, and the concept had pretty much been dismissed. It illustrated Atala’s independent thought, but more importantly, it proved the benefits of using one’s own tissue to avoid rejection issues.

As a surgeon, “I was doing operations on children that hadn’t been updated since the 1800s,” referring to replacing bladder tissue with that of intestinal tissue. It may not occur to us on a regular basis, but intestinal tissue is designed to absorb while bladder tissue is designed to excrete. While it solves one problem, it causes another. And it’s a problem children would have to deal with their entire lives.

Since this isn’t a medical journal, and I’d probably get details wrong, I will simply state that these events were the beginning of a journey for Dr. Atala. Since that time, the team has managed to make bladders, urethras, skeletal muscle, blood vessels and cartilage. They have made great inroads and discoveries that make stem cells available without controversy, and the potential never stops growing.

So why give up Boston to work in Winston-Salem? “North Carolina is number three in the country in the field of biotechnology, and it’s on the rise. The state made a conscious decision decades ago, and everyone is supportive,” Atala says. “I had no intention of leaving Boston, but if we wanted to get things to patients, Wake Forest was a better place for us.”

There might be a few other factors, too. “You leave for a meeting in Boston, and by the time you get back, you missed autumn.”

Prenatal ultrasound image of a 12-week gestation fetus during an amniocentesis session. (Image was captured using a GE Voluson 730 Expert Ultrasound with a 3D probe.)

What I found particularly charming was here is this man with a mind capable of creating body parts (in a manner of speaking) and yet seems as comfortable discussing basketball as easily as protogenic cells.

Dr. Atala, always a diplomat, hinted he might even prefer living in North Carolina to Massachusetts. Imagine that! And when asked about one of the more controversial issues of the state, his tactfulness stayed in place. “I think both kinds of bar-b-que are wonderful.”

I’ll sum up by simply stating there are federal funds in discussion and Dr. Atala works with the military because of the truly humanistic application of this research. It’s nice to know there are some uses for our tax dollars with which few would argue.