Description of Collaborative Activity: |
The National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS) funded Tissue Chip Testing Centers (TCTC) where scientists have used a reference set of validation compounds vetted by pharmaceutical representatives through an NCATS partnership with the IQ Consortium and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to run tests to determine functionality, reproducibility, robustness, and reliability in these organ on chip model platforms. The TCTC scientists coordinated activities among Tissue Chip program-funded investigators and the FDA to support the validation of these chips, with the goal of getting chips to be used widely as a validated research tool and qualified for use in pre-clinical drug testing. The NextGen TCTCs funded in 2018 continued these goals, with a focus on building a self-sustaining financial business model for continuation of the TCTCs after the end of their funding periods. The Microphysiological Systems Database Center is also being supported by NCATS as a federated data warehouse that integrates tissue chips data with other pre-clinical and clinical datasets in order to establish utility and functionality of tissue chips in drug development. |
