The Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) has been awarded an eight-year contract, valued up to $48 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support the utilization of cutting-edge body-on-a-chip technologies aimed at studying and developing potential treatments for sulfur mustard and other fibrosis-inducing chemicals. The program has been approved with an initial contracting commitment of approximately $18 million.
This contract represents a continued partnership between WFIRM and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the HHS Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). In 2019, WFIRM received a $30 million BARDA award to study the effects of chlorine gas exposure using body-on-a-chip technologies. That award allowed WFIRM to create realistic models of lung injury from chlorine gas, paving the way to identify potential medical countermeasures against chemical inhalation injuries.
Building on the success of this research, WFIRM will expand the technology to study fibrotic effects of toxic chemical agents on both the skin and airways.
Chemical exposures, including sulfur mustard, can cause debilitating and life-threatening injuries. Used as a chemical warfare agent in World War I and more recently in the Iraq-Iran War (1980s) and Syrian Civil War (2013-2015) sulfur mustard causes blistering of the skin, damage to the eyes, and respiratory tract injury. Developing effective treatments for these injuries is vital to public health and national security.
The body-on-a-chip is a miniaturized system of human organs created using regenerative medicine techniques that models the body’s response to harmful agents, tests the effects of new compounds during drug discovery, and aids in the development of potential therapies. This system overcomes the substantial limitations of animal models and 2D cell culture models for studying mechanisms of disease. The response of these organ models to fibrosis-inducing chemicals like sulfur mustard will aid in the discovery and development of new medical countermeasures to guide future treatments.
"We are excited to continue our partnership with BARDA and further develop the body-on-a-chip models," said Dr. Anthony Atala, Principal Investigator and Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "The work we did with chlorine gas has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of chemical-induced injuries, and this new funding will allow us to apply these insights to develop critical medical countermeasures for chemical agents."
Testing new treatments using body-on-a-chip systems can reduce the cost, time, and risks associated with traditional early-stage pre-clinical studies.
“The ability to promote the development of medical countermeasures for chemical threats is crucial,” said Sean Murphy, co-lead for the project. “By accurately replicating human responses to toxic chemical exposure, WFIRM’s innovative technology could accelerate the pace of discovery and development of medical countermeasures.”
This project has been supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), under contract number 75A50124C00044.
This award is part of BARDA’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) Division’s portfolio of medical countermeasures. For more information on BARDA’s CBRN Division and its ongoing initiatives, please visit CBRN Portfolio.