
Approximately 85% of late-stage clinical trials of candidate drugs fail because of drug safety problems or ineffectiveness, despite promising preclinical test results. To help improve the design and implementation of clinical trials, the National Institutes of Health has awarded 10 grants to support researchers’ efforts in using tiny, bioengineered models of human tissues and organ systems to study diseases and test drugs. One major goal of the funded projects is to develop ways to better predict which patients are most likely to benefit from an investigational therapy prior to initiating clinical trials. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine affiliated faculty member Alejandro Soto-Gutierrez, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Pittsburgh and an affiliated faculty member of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute, is a co-principal investigator on one of the 10 recently funded projects.