The National Institute on Aging (NIA)/National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently awarded Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants to two projects on which Dr. Kan Shao is serving as principal investigator (PI). The first is to “Develop and Commercialize the Bayesian Dose-Response Modeling System and Services” in conjunction with DREAM Tech LLC. The second, which ties directly in with the first project, is focused on “Software and Services to advance Dose-Response modeling in Chemical Risk Assessment,” of which NIH funded $245,130 for Phase 1, and over two million dollars for Phase 2. An additional $55,000 was awarded as supplemental support for DREAM Tech to attend NIH’s I-Corp program during the summer of 2019. I-Corp trains awardees to identify potential customers and develop business strategies
Dr. Shao shares that DREAM Tech was just selected by NIH Small Business Education and Entrepreneurial Development (SEED) as the NIH Company Showcase Placement at the 2023 BIO International Convention.
The objective of STTR Phase 1 is to develop a web-based Bayesian benchmark dose modeling (BBMD) system that would reduce animal use in toxicity experiments as well as demonstrate its capabilities to enhance the reliability of benchmark doses (BMD). Phase 2 would involve expanding the BBMD modeling system to “model epidemiological and genomic dose-response data to improve its applicability in risk assessment,” says Dr. Shao.
“The Bayesian statistical modeling features make the system innovative and special mainly in two aspects,” he adds. “One: Capable of producing distributional estimation for important quantities to support probabilistic risk assessment which is more favorable for regulatory decision making; and two: Capable of integrating existing toxicological data to improve the plausibility of safe dose estimation and to reduce animal use in toxicity testing.”
Shao explains that dose-response assessment to evaluate chemical toxicity has been used across several fields including drug safety evaluation in preclinical studies, consumer product safety assessment, and food ingredient and additive safety evaluation.
“Supported by the STTR grant, DREAM Tech is developing a Bayesian dose-response modeling system to support chemical toxicity assessment by estimating BMD,” says Dr. Shao. “Therefore, many major sectors can benefit from DREAM Tech LLC’s products and services.”
Some of these sectors Shao points out are chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and consumer product industries, as well as regulatory agencies at federal and state levels, scientific consulting companies, and for-/non-profit research institutions. Currently, the system is being developed to incorporate AI and machine-learning features to increase intelligence with dose-response modeling, and DREAM Tech is also garnering support from governmental and industrial partners to enhance the acceptance and application of the BBMD system in risk assessment.
Learn more about DREAM Tech at dreamtechllc.com. News about SPH-B is always available at go.iu.edu/48bx.
