The National Institutes of Health Microphysiological Systems Program focuses on a critical challenge in the drug discovery pipeline

The National Institutes of Health has partnered with the US Food and Drug Administration and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to accelerate the development of human microphysiological systems (MPS) that address challenges faced in predictive toxicity assessment and efficacy analysis of new molecular entities during the preclinical phase of drug development. Use of human MPS could provide better models for predicting the efficacy of new molecular entities in clinical trials. It is also anticipated that improvements in predicting drug toxicities early in the drug development process through the use of MPS or human organs-on-a-chip will decrease the need to withdraw new therapies from the market and minimize or eliminate deaths due to unidentified drug toxicities.