Baylor College of Medicine has been selected as a site for a new multi-institutional project focused on improving preclinical drug safety assessments. The initiative, called DATAMAP (Digital Acceleration of Toxicity Assessment with Mechanistic and AI-driven Predictions), seeks to accelerate the development of safer therapeutics through advanced technology.
Dr. Tamer Mohamed, associate professor in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery and director of cardiac regeneration, will serve as principal investigator for Baylor and co-investigator for the national team. The project is led by Inductive Bio, an AI drug discovery partner that collaborates with biopharma teams to design better drugs. Funding comes from a contract award of up to $21 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) under its Computational ADME-Tox and Physiology Analysis for Safer Therapeutics (CATALYST) program.
The main objective is to create validated, FDA-qualified digital models that use artificial intelligence alongside physiology-based mathematical modeling to predict human drug toxicity, particularly in the liver and heart—organs often involved in clinical trial failures due to toxicity.
“Members of Baylor’s Department of Surgery will be able to contribute their unique expertise in cardiac tissue modeling. We will lead the development and optimization of state-of-the-art human heart slice culture systems to assess drug-induced cardiotoxicity,” Mohamed said. “By combining advanced cardiac tissue engineering with AI-driven analytics, we aim to set a new standard for predicting drug safety and reducing the risk of adverse cardiac events in clinical trials.”
Mohamed’s team at Baylor will refine methods for preparing and maintaining human cardiac slices while integrating multi-electrode array technology and optical strain/contractility analysis. This approach aims to capture real-time functional data needed for building and validating DATAMAP’s cardiac toxicity prediction models. The contract marks one of the first ARPA-H awards granted for work at Baylor.
“This achievement reflects Baylor’s commitment to advancing biomedical innovation and patient safety,” said Dr. Todd K. Rosengart, professor and DeBakey-Bard Chair of the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery. “We are proud of Dr. Mohamed and his team’s leadership in this national effort.”
Inductive Bio assembled a multidisciplinary group including experts from Amgen, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Torch Bio, along with those from Baylor College of Medicine.
The CATALYST program aims to transform preclinical drug safety prediction by developing human-based models that more accurately estimate toxicity profiles for potential drugs. With ARPA-H funding, DATAMAP will develop secure data infrastructure, generate high-quality system data, and create advanced AI models intended to reduce animal testing while improving preclinical safety assessments.
