ARPA-H program turns your eyes into smart health monitors

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ARPA-H program turns your eyes into smart health monitors 

OCULAB teams envision tears as a 24/7 health indicator, moving beyond single-moment blood tests  

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has awarded funding to four research teams through its Ocular Laboratory for Analysis of Biomarkers (OCULAB) program. These teams will work to create a continuous systemic health monitor and “smart” treatment system that will reside in a patient’s tear duct. If successful, OCULAB could deliver the first system that both reads tear chemistry and adjusts health treatments in real time.

Today, most medical tests rely on blood samples taken at a single moment in time. That snapshot can miss important changes in a person’s health. Tears offer a promising alternative; they are always present and contain many of the same biomarkers found in blood. Tears can be tested in your eyes without being removed. Currently, there are no devices that continuously test tears to detect or treat disease, and no “smart” eye delivery systems on the market that can automatically adjust medication based on what they detect.

“What we’re asking for with OCULAB is a complete rethink of how we monitor and treat disease—using the eye as both a sensor and a delivery system,” said ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson, Ph.D. “That kind of leap, which cuts across biology, nanotechnology, devices, and artificial intelligence (AI), all at once, is exactly the sort of challenge only an ARPA can take on. We’re not looking for incremental improvements; we’re building a new way to see and manage health in real time.”

OCULAB will first focus on dry eye disease (DED), a chronic and often underdiagnosed condition that affects more than 20 million people in the United States, most of them post-menopausal women. DED can cause pain, irritation, and trouble seeing clearly. Over time, OCULAB aims to change how eye, brain, and whole-body conditions are diagnosed, tracked, and treated—using tears as a window into overall health.

“Imagine the ultimate wearable, a minute sensor in your tear duct which is unseen and could monitor your wellness, quietly track disease and adjust treatment for you throughout the day,” said OCULAB Program Manager Calvin Roberts, M.D. “With OCULAB, we’re designing systems that can continuously read the chemistry of your tears and respond with the right therapy at the right moment. This could transform life for people with dry eye disease and open the door to managing conditions like diabetes, depression, and neurologic disease in a far more precise and less invasive way.”

The teams funded under OCULAB will create systems that continuously measure biomarkers in tears and then respond with customized treatment. The goal is to empower individuals and their healthcare providers with a clearer, more complete picture of health than currently possible with occasional blood tests. The program brings together advances in tiny biosensors, long-lasting eye drug delivery devices, and AI to decide how and when to adjust treatment. The OCULAB program total is up to $75.8 million over 4 years. Performer awards vary in funding amount per awardee and are contingent upon each team meeting aggressive and accelerated milestones.  

The awardee teams include:

  • Columbia University (New York, N.Y.) – Developing a new sensor made from DNA structures to measure tear osmolarity (how salty the tears are), a key sign of dry eye disease. The team is also building a highly sensitive, miniaturized single-molecule detector to spot other biomarkers linked to DED and to neurotrophic keratopathy, a painful eye disease.
  • Lacristat, LLC (San Jose, Calif.) – Creating tiny, nanostructured electrodes that can detect signs of dry eye and overall metabolic health, including biomarkers for women’s health in the tears. They will automatically measure tear osmolarity using a method called electrical impedance spectroscopy (EIS).
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Cambridge, Mass.) – Advancing new carbon nanotube–based sensors coated with engineered polymer chains to detect biomarkers of both DED and diabetes. This team will also measure tear osmolarity using EIS.
  • University of Southern California (Los Angeles) – Developing a sensor that uses programmable imprintable polymers and short strands of nucleic acids called aptamers, both attached to gold electrodes, to detect biomarkers linked to DED and depression.