The University of Minnesota Institute for Engineering in Medicine and academic collaborators have received a $26 million National Science Foundation grant to establish a new Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems (ATP-Bio). The Office of the Vice President for Research is supporting this center by contributing to the UMN cost share for the grant.
ATP-Bio will partner with industry to accelerate the growth of technology that preserves biological systems through temperature control, developing new approaches to biopreservation. Industries currently utilizing biopreservation technology include regenerative medicine, organ and tissue transplantation, and aquaculture. ATP-Bio will also make significant investments in education to create a biopreservation workforce pipeline built on the principles of diversity and inclusion. In the future, biopreservation techniques developed by ATP-Bio may transform organ transplantation and other biological therapies, contribute to a sustainable global food supply, preserve and protect biodiversity, improve treatment of physical trauma, and help enable space travel.
ATP-Bio research projects will put ethics and public policy at the forefront by conducting and publishing ethical analyses, augmenting standard review, and engaging policy leaders to anticipate and consider the impacts of ATP-Bio research.
The administrative home for ATP-Bio will be at UMN, with co-leadership from Massachusetts General Hospital and collaboration with University of California Riverside and University of California Berkeley.
Read more about involvement of The Consortium on Law and Values.