# Functional high-throughput contractility assay suite to develop therapeutics for asthma andhypertension

> **NIH NIH R44** · FORCYTE BIOTECHNOLOGIES, INC. · 2020 · $66,248

## Abstract

SUMMARY / ABSTRACT
Asthmatic bronchoconstriction and hypertensive vasoconstriction are extremely common disease
states in which excessive contractile cellular forces directly contribute to the pathophysiology.
Existing treatments for these diseases, which affect 25 million and 75 million Americans,
respectively, have severe side-effects, become desensitized over prolonged use, or lack efficacy
altogether. In particular, LABAs used in asthma management carry a “black-box” warning, and
15-20% of hypertensive patients require >3 drugs to control blood pressure. Despite
understanding the role of cellular force in these scenarios, drug developers have lacked the drug
discovery tools that directly target this critically important phenotype. Instead, many new drug
development efforts continue to focus on known pathways.
Clearly, there is a significant clinical unmet need in treating resistant asthma and hypertension,
and there are large associated (>$20B) markets worldwide. Specifically, there is need to develop
new classes of drugs with molecular mechanisms of action that are orthogonal to existing
therapies that promote smooth muscle cell relaxation causing bronchodilation or vasodilation.
Forcyte Biotechnologies is an early-stage bio-pharmaceutical company based in Los Angeles
that is leveraging a UCLA-borne microtechnology known as FLECS – a high-throughput
screening (HTS) platform that measures contractility of single-cells in a 384-wellplate format –
to identify and bring to market new compound classes that act on force-generating pathways
within cells. This is the first and only reported assay that obtains functional force generation
data for single cells, at HTS scales. Our initial programs will focus on treatment resistant asthma
and hypertension, but can extend to other diseases associated with abnormal cellular force.
In this proposal, we will focus on the natural progression of our platform, seeking to first design
and implement workflows to automate the end-to-end execution the assay to enable
throughputs of 10K cmpds/day and we will automate the multiplexing strategies we established
feasibility for during phase 1. We will also build on our phase 1 research to develop the first
truly high-throughput quantitative tissue-level (“tissuoid”) contractility assay (in a 384-wellplate
format) to supplement our single-cell assays and enable for the first time, the engineering of
treatment-resistant contractile disease models on-chip, completing our commercial assay suite.
Finally, we will perform a large-scale validation screen of a small molecule library to obtain key
performance metrics of our assay workflow, and to validate the strength of our technique. The
products and services enabled by this research are novel and will address urgent needs for both
pharmaceutical companies seeking to bolster their pipelines, and researchers working on early
drug discovery.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10104397
- **Project number:** 3R44TR002350-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** FORCYTE BIOTECHNOLOGIES, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Ivan Pushkarsky
- **Activity code:** R44 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $66,248
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-05-15 → 2021-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10104397

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10104397, Functional high-throughput contractility assay suite to develop therapeutics for asthma andhypertension (3R44TR002350-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10104397. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*