? The diagnosis and therapy of drug and chemical toxicity is a significant public health problem and impacts millions of Americans with medical expenditures >$3 billion/year. This intractable public health threat remains for several reasons including a diverse number of toxic agents in multiple locations and patient classes, barriers to interdisciplinary research at the college and university level, and mechanisms of federal research support limited to single-investigator, hypothesis-driven, organ- or disease-specific studies. This proposal's overall objective is to develop interdisciplinary research teams to address this intractable public health threat using art adapted engineered systems method of research advocated by the National Science Foundation. To our knowledge this paradigm of physical research has not heretofore been applied to these types of biomedical problems. This objective will be achieved by accomplishing the following specific aims: ? ? Specific Aim 1. Create a planning structure through which individuals from a variety of relevant disciplines can interact, research strategies can be developed, and institutional barriers to collaborative research can be addressed. ? Specific Aim 2. Identify and minimize institutional barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration. ? Specific Aim 3. Identify specific problems in the diagnosis and treatment of toxicity and develop research strategies to solve them. ? Specific Aim 4. Conduct pilot research to test the feasibility of selected research strategies identified in Aim 3 and to validate the planning approach. ? ? A secondary objective of this project is to cause evolution at the University of Florida with respect to the financial, scientific, and other barriers to interdisciplinary research by employing management, administrative, and psychological teams. Successful achievement of this objective will enable additional activities similar to those described herein in order to advance the public health of the citizens of this nation not only for drug and chemical intoxication, but also for other seemingly intractable health problems. ? ?
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