Scheffer Tseng: MD develops and markets wound-healing technologies

It was totally by accident that Dr. Scheffer Tseng became interested in ophthalmology.

When he first moved to the US from Taiwan at the age of 25, he wasn’t able to practice because his medical degree was from a foreign country. The only option open to him at the time, Dr. Tseng said, was to pursue further education, so he earned a Ph.D. in experimental pathology and became extremely interested in research and was pleased to discover he had a talent for it.

Somehow, Dr. Tseng said, ophthalmology was the field open to him. He was fortunate to enter a program at the John Hopkins Hospital, which he said was the best training program in ophthalmology. That paved the way forward, Dr. Tseng said, and described everything following running smoothly.

Today, Dr. Tseng is an ophthalmologist, performing surgery on patients with difficult or complicated ocular surface diseases. He’s also the chairman of the board and the chief scientific officer for TissueTech, a company that, along with its commercial subsidiaries, is solely dedicated to uncovering and bringing to market wound healing no matter if it’s in the eye or other parts of the body.

TissueTech’s research is supported in part by National Institute of Health grants but more and more by annual revenues the company generates.

The reconstructive procedures of particular note that Dr. Tseng and his team have contributed include the stem cell transplantation to bring stem cells from the patient or another person to the diseased eye.

Following that, their next major contribution was the amniotic membrane transplantation. Amniotic membrane is the tissue in the birth placenta.

Dr. Tseng said he and his team of scientists have been able to take advantage of the placenta tissue and transform it into several products.

Fetal wound healing turns out to be very different from adult wound healing, Dr. Tseng said, and he and his team believe it tends to be regenerative with minimal or no scarring, and that particular tissue heals at a much better speed or with a better outcome. 

These two procedures TissueTech pioneered have been approved by our Medicare system as standard procedures today.

Miami Today reporter Susan Danseyar interviewed Dr. Tseng in his office at the Ocular Surface Center.

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