Organ On A Chip—DIA/NORD October 22 2012

Hi, everyone,
Just a brief of what I learn today.

Develop ” organ tissue on a chip” to predict drug safety and efficacy testing.
Ie: lung on a chip or liver on a chip to study the safety and efficacy of the drug , the” liver-on- a-chip” mimics complex liver function,mimics the inflammatory response to cytokines;and to predict other response to physiological stretch.
This kind of micro physiological systems program started in 2011 to screen for safe and effective drugs swiftly and efficiently(before human testing).All ten human physiological systems will be functionally represented by human tissue constructs.( ie:GI,IMMUNE AND RESPIRATORY SYSTEMS).

Also in another session ,they talked about NIH- industry pilot program: Discovering new therapeutic uses for existing molecules. It is a new project started just six months ago . 58 compounds given out by drug companies so far for this project. The goal is to identify new therapeutic uses of proprietary compounds and biological across a board range of human diseases in areas of medical need. This initiative will match candidate agents from eight pharmaceutical partners with innovative ideas for new indications from the biomedical research community. NIH provides template Collaborative Research Agreements(CRAs),funding ,review and oversight;pharmaceutical partners such as Eli Lilly, provides compounds,biological,in kind support, and pertinent data;Academic researchers provide deep understanding of disease biology,new concepts to test,and access to appropriate patient populations.
As you can see what they called this cooperation among drug companies,NIH and researchers is “crowdsourcing”–a new strategy with basic idea to tap into the collective intelligence of the research community.

Another session talked about establishing and using Electronic health records system to lower the research cost of U.S. which is the most expensive country (ie:US research costs 1 dollar but Germany only costs 50cents and India=36cents)

Got to go to watch the final debate.
God bless