In 2021, a tri-institutional team made up of Shawn Hingtgen, PhD, from the UNC School of Pharmacy; Scott Floyd, MD, PhD, from Duke Radiation Oncology; and Catherine Flores, PhD, from the University of Florida Neurosurgery was awarded a multi-million-dollar U01 grant from the Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health.
The team, colloquially called Project Brainslice, is a consortium effort to identify, develop and initiate translation of therapeutic neurological agents using the organotypic brain slice culture (OBSC) platform. The team’s OBSC models leverage existing cellular and extracellular milieu in the live brain slices to allow rapid, functional testing on brain tissue.
Project Brainslice spans three CTSA Program hubs (UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke University and the University of Florida); the team has developed multiple models for neurological disorders and has shown the effectiveness of the OBSC platform to discover new mechanisms of disease and identify new therapeutic compounds.
Together, the team’s approaches will create an expandable infrastructure built around OBSC technology, accelerate the discovery of new and effective therapeutic strategies and initiate translation towards ultimate human patient trials to treat multiple disorders of the brain.
View the new Project Brainslice website here
Learn more about leadership and funding for Project Brainslice here