Dr. D. Lansing Taylor, director of the Drug Discovery Institute, is the PI on a $5.8 million grant funded by the National Institutes of Health.  The project is a part of the NIH’s Tissue Chip for Drug Screening program, which aims to develop better tools for predicting drug safety and effectiveness.

“Researchers from 11 institutions will collaborate over three years to refine existing 3-D human tissue chips and combine them into an integrated system that can mimic the complex functions of the human body.”

Taylor quotes, “We are very enthusiastic about the potential of these microphysiology systems to serve as powerful platforms for studying human diseases and identifying human toxic liabilities.”

Read more about the project in this article.

University of Pittsburgh receives $5.8M grant to develop 3-D liver model. Pittsburgh, PA 24 Sept 2014. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Summer 2014 edition of Pitt Med, entitled “Tailor Made – Trying on Personalized Medicine,” takes a closer look at personalized medicine and UPMC’s five-year, $100 million plan to bring it to Pittsburgh.

Dr. Jeremy Berg (Director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine, Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning, Health Sciences, and Pittsburgh Foundation Professor of Personalized Medicine and Computational and Systems Biology) is a key figure in this effort. In the article, “Stitching the Pieces Together,” he and the other leaders of this plan talk about it’s progress and the practical, ethical and clinical questions that arise with personalized medicine.

Dr. Berg is also featured in the cover article, “Trying on Personalized Medicine“.

Pick up a copy of the publication or read more about it online.

Photo credit: Lazure, Catherine. Tailored medicine, easy right? 2014. PittMed, Pittsburgh, Pa.