{"id":233922,"date":"2026-03-23T23:04:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/johns-hopkins-awarded-15m-to-develop-platform-to-study-neurological-diseases-screen-chemicals"},"modified":"2026-03-23T23:04:04","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T04:04:04","slug":"johns-hopkins-awarded-15m-to-develop-platform-to-study-neurological-diseases-screen-chemicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/johns-hopkins-awarded-15m-to-develop-platform-to-study-neurological-diseases-screen-chemicals","title":{"rendered":"Johns Hopkins awarded $15M to develop platform to study neurological diseases, screen chemicals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/johns-hopkins-awarded-15m-to-develop-platform-to-study-neurological-diseases-screen-chemicals.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The DROID platform will extend current <em>in vitro<\/em> approaches\u2014test tubes and culture dishes\u2014to modeling learning and memory using brain organoids, addressing a critical gap: Current <em>in vitro<\/em> assays cannot capture higher-order neural responses, and evaluations of neurotoxicity or drug efficacy still primarily rely on animal behavioral tests.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers will also evaluate brain organoids derived from both healthy individuals and patients with Alzheimer\u2019s disease and individuals with SYNGAP1-related disorders\u2014a rare pediatric condition associated with intellectual disability, seizures, and autism\u2014to test neural responses and sensitivity to pharmacological interventions.<\/p>\n<p>By enabling researchers to assess complex neural responses that currently rely on animal behavioral tests, the DROIDp system aims to improve drug discovery and neurotoxicity testing. Ultimately, the goal of this platform is to provide a more predictive, human-relevant approach for studying neurological diseases and evaluating the safety of drugs and chemicals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DROID platform will extend current in vitro approaches\u2014test tubes and culture dishes\u2014to modeling learning and memory using brain organoids, addressing a critical gap: Current in vitro assays cannot capture higher-order neural responses, and evaluations of neurotoxicity or drug efficacy still primarily rely on animal behavioral tests. The researchers will also evaluate brain organoids derived [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}