A research team at NYU Langone Health and Sage Bionetworks has been awarded a $25 million grant to establish the data hub and coordinating center for the National Institutes of Health's Complement-Animal Research in Experimentation (Complement-ARIE) program.
The mission of Complement-ARIE is to speed the development of new approach methodologies (NAMs). These lab- or computer-based testing approaches can more accurately model human biology and complement or replace traditional animal research models. Technologies to be developed include complex, often 3D, human-based cell systems (such as organoid or organ-on-a-chip platforms); computational, machine learning, or artificial intelligence models; and cell-free biochemical assays for toxicology screenings.
The NIH award to NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Sage is $5 million a year for five years, for a total of $25 million. The award will establish the NYU-Sage NAMs Data Hub and Coordination Center (NYU-Sage NDHCC), which will enable the standardization, harmonization, and sharing of datasets—from molecular tests to 3D cultures to simulated population outcomes—using a cloud architecture. The hub will serve as the consortium's backbone for data, metadata, code, and computational models; provide AI-augmented data curation and a framework for harmonizing NAMs data across the consortium; and be a source of analytical tools to help researchers work with datasets.
The NYU-Sage NDHCC will also foster collaboration among all components of the Complement-ARIE consortium through interactive workshops, benchmarking competitions for an extended community of researchers, and engagement with constituencies vested in the advances of NAMs technologies.
A defining feature of the NDHCC will be its FAIR, Unified Schema for Interoperability of Ontologies in NAMs (FUSION) framework, an approach to data standards that enables the hub to adapt its handling of multimodal data alongside the rapidly growing NAMs field. FUSION integrates biomedical knowledge maps (ontologies) into a common data model, ensuring that data from diverse experimental and in silico NAMs are interoperable and reusable.
"As part of the Complement-ARIE consortium, our joint team will advance the understanding of human health and disease by coordinating the full spectrum of data generated across the consortium, transforming it into a resource ready to drive new discoveries by our team, consortium members, and the broader community," said Gustavo A. Stolovitzky, PhD, director of the Biomedical Data Sciences Hub (Bio-DaSH) within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and professor in the Department of Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Dr. Stolovitzky will be the contact-principal investigator for the new data hub. The other principal investigators are Jineta Banerjee, PhD, associate director of advanced data analytics at Sage Bionetworks; David Fenyo, PhD, professor at the Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone; Stuart D. Katz, MD, professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Langone; and Chang Yu, PhD, professor in the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone.
Complement-ARIE also includes grants that establish several technology development centers at other institutions, all coordinated by the data hub. These centers will develop NAM technologies to address areas of greatest scientific need. The third part of the grant-funded consortium will be the Validation and Qualification Network, a public-private partnership that draws on industry and regulatory expertise to standardize criteria for validating NAMs.
The project is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health Common Fund, which supports cross-cutting programs expected to have high impact, under grant U24ES03837.
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