Professor Martin Yarmush and collaborators at the University of Pittsburgh have been awarded a 2-year, $2.2M grant from National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the NIH for a project entitled, "A3-D Biomimetic Liver Sinusoid Construct for Predicting Physiology and Toxicity". The goal of this project is to construct a microfluidic liver module which mimics the functions and responses of the human liver, with readouts designed to indicate both normal liver function and toxic responses. This grant is part of "The Tissue Chip for Drug Screening Initiative", the first interagency collaboration launched by NCATS, which aims to develop 3-D human tissue chips that accurately model the structure and function of human organs, such as the lung, liver and heart.