Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Advanced Organ Biofabrication

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. Biofabricated organs could eliminate declining quality of life and premature death for millions of patients with organ failure. Organ transplantation is an effective therapy, increasing patients? life-spans and quality of life for years to decades. However, there are only about 30,000 natural donor organs available every year. Additionally, artificial organs are either incapable of permanent support (lungs and livers) or far less effective than transplanted organs (hearts and kidneys). Unlike artificial organs, biofabricated organs will be composed of tissue and thus fully biological. Therefore, these organs will be less prone to complications. Greater availability and better function will also allow these organs to be implanted earlier than current donor organs, before there are severe decreases in a patient?s quality of life. To achieve this goal, however, new material, technologies and methods for making these organs must be developed. This effort will require the collaboration of a team of scientists from many research areas. It will also require the support of industry, foundation, health care, and community partners. Therefore, this grant will develop a plan for the creation of a Center for Advanced Organ Biofabrication to oversee this effort. To achieve this, the academic team at Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Texas El-Paso (UTEP) will work with these partners to develop scientific and educational goals for the Center that ensures success innovating scientific and technological breakthroughs, building a diverse transdisciplinary work force, and creating mass-produced biofabricated organs. Within this planning grant, we propose to establish the scientific and educational objectives of the Center and establish a network of industrial, foundation, community, and clinical stakeholders to support its mission. We will utilize the requested funds to support the following activities: (1) monthly online meetings and two separate site visits with the academic partners to review facilities and develop research, educational, diversity, and industrial consortium plans, (2) meet with companies developing biological products, biofabrication hardware, and pharmaceuticals to develop consortium priorities, and (3) hold a larger, local planning meeting with academic, industrial, foundation, and clinical stakeholders. Meetings with the academic partners will allow us to (1) confirm shared research priorities, (2) build transdisciplinary teams to meet our research, educational, and industrial goals, (3) plan for intercampus research interactions between students at all levels, (4) develop diversity plans, with special emphasis on the role of UTEP as a majority minority institution, and (5) further refine our lists of ideal industrial consortium partners. Online meetings with selected companies will allow us to discuss common scientific interests. The meetings will also create a project-based consortium in which companies have access to thought leaders in this field, become educated in the latest research tools and techniques, support specific research projects, and have the ability to license resulting intellectual property. Lastly, the year-end summit will be held to present a comprehensive outline of our ERC proposal to our research and educational partners, selected industrial groups, foundations, and clinicians. This will be essential to ensuring a strong, supportive community around this work, and we will use the feedback from this meeting to prepare our full ERC proposal. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.