Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Development of 3D Human Tissue Models Awarded NIH Grants Worth $15M

Reporter: Irina Robu, PhD

NIH has awarded $15 million for Tissue Chip for Disease Modeling and Efficacy Testing to develop 3D human tissue models. The 3D platforms, also called tissue chips support living cells and human tissues, it mimics the complex biological functions of organs/tissues and at the same time provide a new way to test potential drugs and their effectiveness. The awards will allow scientists to study and understand diseases mechanism and forecast how patients respond and is part of the first phase of a five-year program.  According to NCATS Director, Dr. Christopher P. Austin “these tissue chips to provide more accurate platforms to understand diseases, and to be more predictive of the human response to drugs than current research models, thereby improving the success rate of candidate drugs in human clinical trials”.

The awards will be used to study common and rare diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, influenza A, kidney disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy, and hemorrhagic telangiectasia. Award recipients are Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Columbia University, Duke University, Harvard University, Northwestern University, University of California Davis, University of California Irvine, University of Pittsburgh, University of Rochester, University of Washington Seattle and Vanderbilt University.

SOURCE

https://www.mdtmag.com/news/2017/09/nih-grants-15m-development-3d-human-tissue-models