Johns Hopkins University has received a UM1 cooperative agreement award of USD 2,856,513 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences for fiscal year 2026. The funding is to support the development of the Drug Research Organoid-Integrated Development platform, known as DROIDp, a human iPSC-derived brain organoid system designed to model learning and memory processes in vitro for neurodevelopmental disorder research and chemical safety testing.
The platform combines 3D brain organoids with microelectrode arrays and AI-driven analytics, including self-supervised learning and explainable AI, to generate multimodal readouts spanning electrophysiology, transcriptomics, and extracellular vesicle profiling. Disease models under evaluation include SYNGAP1-related disorders and Alzheimer's disease. The work is administered through Johns Hopkins' School of Public Health and led by principal investigators Lena Smirnova and Erik Christopher Johnson, with the project running through December 2030.
The grant reflects NIH's Complement-ARIE program focus on reducing reliance on animal behavioral assays in preclinical neurotoxicology, with DROIDp positioned for formal validation by the Complement-ARIE network and potential regulatory uptake following the project period.
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