Dr. Schurdak is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh, and a core member of OPTIn. His talk will highlight the importance of reproducibility in the development and implementation of NAMs for precision medicine.

Dr. Schurdak`s research focus is in two main areas: 1) the qualification of the liver acinus microphysiological (LAMPS) platform as a drug development tool (DDT) with the FDA; and 2) the application of quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) to understand the mechanisms of neurodegenerative disease progression and identify therapeutic strategies for traumatic brain injury (TBI), Huntington’s disease (HD), and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).  He is a multi-PI of the Translational Center for Microphysiological Systems (Pitt-TraCe) leading the efforts to qualifying the LAMPS as a DTT for two contexts of use (CoU) to: 1) establish hepatic clearance of drug candidates in patients with metabolic dysfunction- associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) to assist in the determination of drug candidate dosing in clinical trials when patients with MASLD are included; and 2) establish the hepatotoxicity of drug candidates in patients with MASLD to assist in the determination of drug candidate dosing in clinical trials when patients with MASLD are included.  In a collaboration with Shaun Carlson in the Department of Neurological Surgery he is leading the effort in applying QSP to generate a dynamic network map of TBI progression induced by Controlled Cortical Impact (CCI) to examine the role of CME in TBI disease progression.