The National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) https://ncats.nih.gov within NIH www.nih.gov recently announced that approximately $6 million was awarded to establish three testing centers for the “Tissue Chip for Drug Screening” program.
The Tissue Chip Drug Testing Centers http://tissuechip/projects/centers test and validate tissue chip platforms independently, promote the adoption of the technology, and make tissue chip technology generally available.
The NCATS award made through the Cures Acceleration Network went to MIT, Texas A&M University, to conduct the validation of the tissue chip platforms. The universities are working with the University of Pittsburgh to set up the tissue chip database for each organ platform.
The Drug Discovery Institute’s Micro Physiological System (MPS) http://projectreporter.nih.gov/project_info_description.cfm? Testing Database Center at the University of Pittsburgh stores the data. The MPS Testing Database Center will also develop and implement tools to evaluate the performance of the tissue chips.
In addition, NCATS and NASA’s Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) www.iss.casis.org announced a funding opportunity for a four year $12 million partnership which will feature tissue chips for organs-on-chips to help scientists develop and advance novel technologies to improve human health on Earth.