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PASADENA, Calif. -- National Geographic Channel's "Explorer" (10 p.m. Monday) looks at regenerative medicine next week in the program "How to Build a Beating Heart," which was filmed in part at Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, a joint University of Pittsburgh/UPMC effort.

Read more after the jump. ...

  In the one-hour film, Dr. Stephen Badylak, deputy director of regenerative medicine at McGowan, said much of the funding for research comes from the defense department for a simple reason: Today more soldiers survive in war time but more are also injured. In the program he says the ratio of injured-to-killed was two inured for every soldier killed. But in Iraq and Afghanistan the ratio is nine injured for every one who dies due to better armor that allows soldiers to survive but with severe injuries.

"They're coming back with without limbs and with horrendous facial deformities," Dr. Badylak said at a National Geographic Channel press conference last month. "Our Defense Department, to their credit, recognizes this. Loads of money are going into it, and it spills over to the civilian population, so we benefit, just like people benefit from the space program."

Other McGowan personnel featured in the program include Alan Russell and Jorg C. Gerlach, who demonstrates a new procedure for regenerating skin on a burn victim, Matt Uram, a Pennsylvania state police officer who was burned when someone threw gasoline on a bonfire. (Warning: Some of the images, including the burns, may be disturbing to some viewers.)

"The whole concept of regenerative medicine is based on tricking the body," said Dr. Badylak, a researcher who works with doctors who see patients for clinical trials. "You trick the body into thinking I'm regrowing whatever's damaged or missing versus responding to an injury."

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