Intramural - Extramural Collaboration for Advanced 3-D Tissue Models for Drug Screening (Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

<p>NIH intends to publish a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to solicit applications that will develop, validate and demonstrate the utility of advanced 3-D tissue models for testing the efficacy of various therapeutic modalities, including small molecules and biologics and accelerate the discovery and development of new therapeutics across different diseases.</p><p>The initiative will develop advanced 3-D drug screening models adaptable to high throughput assays. These non-animal models are expected to mimic structural, biochemical and mechanical properties of tissue that are representative of a drug’s behavior in a body, resulting in improved predictive accuracy. This is an expansion upon the work conducted under previous NOFOs,&nbsp;RFA-TR-17-007,&nbsp;RFA-TR-19-020 and&nbsp;RFA-TR-21-015,&nbsp;that have focused on development of 3-D skin and other tissue models for drug screening. The applicants are required to utilize the 3-D modeling/drug screening expertise and infrastructure available at the&nbsp;NCATS 3-D Bioprinting laboratory. 3-D tissue models in a well-based drug screening platform should be as complex as necessary to achieve physiological/pharmacological relevance, and as simple as possible to make the models robust, reliable and amenable to drug screening. Grant authorities that allow NCATS to forecast this opportunity are as follows: 42 U.S. Code § 287a - Cures Acceleration Network.</p>