Liver disease researchers and clinicians at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) will use a $7.8 million grant to create a new drug discovery center called the Pitt Translational Center for Microphysiology Systems. The funding was announced this month by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health. The investigators will use human “liver-on-a-chip" systems in collaboration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to improve drug discovery and development.
Organs-on-chips, also called microphysiology systems (MPS), replicate the physiological environment and functions of human organs. They can be used to predict drug responses in disease models and to evaluate drug safety while reducing reliance on animal testing. The center, managed within the Pitt Drug Discovery Institute, will “qualify” human livers-on-chips as drug discovery tools and submit the results to the FDA for approval.
“The center benefits from the recent implementation of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 that emphasizes alternative approaches, including MPS, to traditional testing with animals for predicting drug safety before starting human clinical trials,” said Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, director of the Center for Transcriptional Medicine and a professor of pathology...
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