The University of Minnesota Institute for Engineering in Medicine has received a new $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). 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. Professor Susan Wolf, chair of the U’s Consortium on Law and Values, will lead the Ethics & Public Policy component of ATP-Bio; she will also serve on the ATP-Bio Executive Committee. She will work with faculty at the University of Minnesota and the cooperating ATP-Bio institutions (Massachusetts General Hospital, UC Riverside, and UC Berkeley) as well as an Ethics Advisory Panel.
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. Read more about ATP-Bio here.