Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF)

Service organisation committed to providing allograft tissues in the musculoskeletal area.

The Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation is a non-profit organisation that was founded in 1987 by a group of orthopaedic oncologists and surgeons. MTF is an organ procurement organisation and tissue bank that works with 30 other organ procurement organisations across the US. MTF is completely dependent on donations of bones and tissues. The organisation does no fund-raising and operation is funded by the purchase of MTF bones and other tissues by hospitals.

Bruce W. Stroever, President and CEO
Martha Anderson, Executive Vice President of Donor Services
Arthur A. Gertzman, Executive Vice President of Research and Development
Michael J. Kawas, Executive Vice President of Operations/CFO
George A. Oram, Executive Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Joe Yaccarino, Vice-President, Processing Operations

William Tomford, MD, Chairman
Donald Hackbarth, MD, Vice-Chairman
William Enneking, MD
Joseph Benevenia, MD
Tom Beyersdorf
Mark Bolander, MD
Joseph Buckwalter, MD
Victor Frankel, MD, PhD
Gerald Finerman, MD
Allan Gross, MD
Lloyd Jordan
Richard Nicholas, MD
Dan Spengler, MD

125 May Street
Edison, NJ 08837
USA
Phone: +1-732-661-0202
Fax: +1-732-661-2298

When accepting tissues, MTF generally checks the safety of potential donor tissue. A recovery team harvests the tissue in a surgical operation; the donor’s body is reconstructed using prosthetic devices. Subsequently, all materials that could cause rejection or disease are removed, including the bone marrow. Only bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) is the only protein that is not removed because of its supporting capabilities in healing bone fractures. The tissues are checked for diseases, processed and either frozen at 70°C or freeze-dried and stored in the MTF’s tissue bank (5 years).

In addition to this service, MTF technicians are able to process bone materials into pins and screws for hand, foot, and ankle surgeries that will integrate into the recipient’s body.

Demineralised bone that is left over from processing is crushed and then turned into a gel that can be used in trauma cases to fill in bone cracks and spaces.

The following section contains a selection of the company’s most relevant patents. For comprehensive patent information please refer to the espacenet databases.