In vitro Models Suitable for High-throughput Screening of Drug Toxicities in Human Tissues

The drug R&D cycle is long and very expensive. In many ways, this status quo can no longer be sustained. One of the reasons for such great cost is that the vast majority of drug candidates are screened out at the stages of animal and human trials. More efficient methods of testing of drugs at the stage of ex-vivo studies, which are substantially less expensive than animal and human testing cycles, will lead to improvement of the success rate of preclinical trials, acceleration of drug discovery, reduction of the cost of pharmaceutical development, and better drugs. In this Phase I SBIR project involving a start-up company Nico Technology Corporation (NTCorp) and the University of Michigan, we propose the development of a new type of 3D scaffold that can (1) rectify the problems of existing 3D matrixes and (2) provide the pharmaceutical industry the possibility to develop convenient and reliable protocols for drug assessment in organ replicas, and in particular ex-vivo bone marrow construct.