Project Grant DP2GM170827

The National Institutes of Health Office of the Director awarded The Trustees of The University of Pennsylvania $771,875 on September 1, 2026, under the Trans-NIH Research Support program (CFDA 93.310) to advance synthetic biology approaches for directing tissue assembly and organoid engineering.

The research program maps molecular features of cell adhesion molecules to adhesion strength, trains machine learning models to predict molecular organization from molecular inputs, and applies these models to rationally design synthetic tissue structures. The work develops and characterizes synthetic cell adhesion molecules (syncams)—chimeric receptors enabling systematic comparison of adhesion function—integrated with pooled cell libraries, high-throughput spatial sequencing, and computational modeling. The research platform will rapidly characterize thousands of unique adhesion-driven architectures to identify design rules connecting molecular features of adhesion molecules to tissue-level properties such as cell spreading and cell sorting. Machine learning models trained on this data will examine modular function of cell adhesion molecules and assemble complex multicellular structures modeling skin layers. The work establishes design rules for multicellular assembly and an engineering-based approach to building complex organoids and cellular therapies, with potential to reduce reliance on animal testing in disease modeling and drug screening.

Performance takes place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with a period of performance from September 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031. The award is classified as a Project Grant, a standard assistance type under Trans-NIH Research Support covering investigator-initiated research reviewed for scientific merit and program relevance through peer review.