OHSU secures $9.2 million to build next generation ‘organs on chips’ for bone related cancers to continue SDF funded project

Two new awards, led by Alexander Davies, D.V.M., Ph.D., and Luiz Bertassoni, D.D.S., Ph.D., build on a $3.5 million NIH grant awarded to Bertassoni in 2025 and are affiliated with the Knight Cancer Precision Biofabrication Hub, a strategic initiative of the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute. Together, the three grants total nearly $9.2 million, establishing OHSU as a leader in using engineered human tissue models to study bone cancers and cancers that grow to the bone — an area of critical unmet medical need.

The award led by Davies, an assistant professor of oncological sciences and pediatrics in the OHSU School of Medicine, is for $3.17 million and focuses on osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that often affects children and adolescents. Survival rates for those whose disease has spread to the lungs have remained largely unchanged for more than four decades.

More details can be found in this OHSU press release.