via Science Magazine, by Jocelyn Kaiser
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins's controversial plan to launch a new center for translational biomedical research got a boost today in a White House announcement on science initiatives. NIH also rolled out an early project for the planned center, promising up to $140 million over 5 years to develop a chip for predicting drug toxicity.
The drug chip will be developed in a partnership to include NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and DARPA--the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--which is known for funding risky research. Collins says the first-ever collaboration of this kind will try to combine human cell types, such as liver and kidney cells, that can represent physiological systems and "talk to each other" on a chip that will be used to predict whether a drug will be safe. Researchers will try to grow cells in three dimensions rather than as a flat layer because that's a better way to model how a drug will act in human tissues. The project "is really ambitious," Collins says.
DARPA this week began soliciting proposals for its piece, which will focus on engineering. NIH's half of the funding, which may involve both intramural and extramural researchers, will come from the director's Common Fund.
The drug chip will be a project of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which got a mention when President Barack Obama signed a new patent bill. The White house also touted a new low-cost licensing agreement to help startup companies license inventions from NIH and FDA intramural research.
Read the rest.
[Content that is linked from other sources is for informational purposes and should not construe a Mapping Pathways position.]
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins's controversial plan to launch a new center for translational biomedical research got a boost today in a White House announcement on science initiatives. NIH also rolled out an early project for the planned center, promising up to $140 million over 5 years to develop a chip for predicting drug toxicity. The drug chip will be developed in a partnership to include NIH, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and DARPA--the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--which is known for funding risky research. Collins says the first-ever collaboration of this kind will try to combine human cell types, such as liver and kidney cells, that can represent physiological systems and "talk to each other" on a chip that will be used to predict whether a drug will be safe. Researchers will try to grow cells in three dimensions rather than as a flat layer because that's a better way to model how a drug will act in human tissues. The project "is really ambitious," Collins says.
DARPA this week began soliciting proposals for its piece, which will focus on engineering. NIH's half of the funding, which may involve both intramural and extramural researchers, will come from the director's Common Fund.
The drug chip will be a project of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), which got a mention when President Barack Obama signed a new patent bill. The White house also touted a new low-cost licensing agreement to help startup companies license inventions from NIH and FDA intramural research.
Read the rest.
[Content that is linked from other sources is for informational purposes and should not construe a Mapping Pathways position.]
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