Research Topics

Infectious diseases, chemical agents and toxins represent a significant threat global public health and to the health of our military service members. Factors such as climate change, increased population growth, expansion into animal habitats, and prevalence of antimicrobial resistance have led to emergence of novel pathogens as well as rise of previously controlled infections.  Global instabilities and rising conflicts worldwide also increase the threat of release or use of chemical or biological agents that pose a danger to the general public and to warfighters in particular. The ability to rapidly monitor the presence of threat agents or the spread of disease is crucial for prevention, interference and control. With the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, wastewater surveillance is an example of a useful rapid approach for monitoring disease spread and levels in the community. Additional pathogens have been shown to be detectable in wastewater, allowing for the monitoring of multiple circulating pathogens. The principles of wastewater biosurveillance can extend beyond the general public to the government agencies to help monitor safety and to protect key assets and locations, and are applicable to other more complex environmental samples. Development of rapid threat agnostic detection is necessary to protect communities against and these chemical and biological threats.

Draper has been developing organ-on-chip, or microphysiological systems (MPS) technologies toward a range of applications for over two decades, with a central focus on engineered tissues for disease modeling, safety testing and drug development, and for screening of medical countermeasures against high priority pathogens and other threat agents.  While engineering platforms for these model systems are fairly well-established, several key technical advances could augment and expand capabilities toward key drug development and biosecurity applications.  These include: 1) the development of new MPS organ and disease models beyond Draper’s current portfolio, with particular interest in neural and cardiac models; 2) the integration of immune components into organ models; 3) the development of new disease models, such as for thrombosis and coagulopathy applications; 4) Automation of downstream assays via innovations in microfluidics, next generation sequencing, artificial intelligence/machine learning and high content imaging are also key to driving down the costs and increasing the throughput of these model systems.  Advancements in MPS technologies will enable rapid response to emerging threats and improve medical countermeasure development.

Modeling emerging threats and developing mitigation strategies requires an ever-advancing set of capabilities for analyzing data obtained from clinical samples, preclinical animal studies, and model systems such as organs on chips.  Conventional analytical tools provide a limited window into the dynamics of pathogenesis, including entry, replication, and immune downregulation, which has resulted in a dearth of countermeasures despite years of research. Novel capabilities in single-cell analysis and in capturing and probing multi-omics datasets including proteomics/genomics, epigenomics and the microbiome, will be critical in designing increasingly complex and powerful model systems for the investigation of disease mechanisms and evaluation of therapeutic approaches.  Integration of these multi-omic readouts at both the tissue and single-cell levels will ultimately contribute to accelerated response to emerging threats, and reduced costs and wider availability of vaccines and therapeutics during health emergencies.