GE Global Research, the technology development arm for the General Electric, has signed a two-year, $1.1 million collaboration with the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative to develop a physiologically based ‘virtual human’. This collaboration is supported by a contract awarded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the US Department of Defense.
According to GE, the Biotic Man project is expected to involve the design of a computer model that could dramatically speed drug design in response to the threat of biological attacks on the battlefield or in domestic situations. The project will advance a software program originally developed by GE Global Research. This physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) software tool uses computational models to measure a drug’s response in the body long before clinical trials.
GE researchers will adapt the PBPK tool to computationally model the impact of bacterial, viral and other infectious agents on the human body. The modified tool will simulate the response of new antibiotic or antiviral drug therapies to a specific threat. In addition, the tool will be designed to accurately represent the physiological changes in a critically ill patient suffering from burns, trauma or recent surgery to help evaluate the effectiveness of the drug therapy under the various conditions it might be administered, said GE Global Research.
