ARPA-H project seeks to transform donor kidney availability for lifesaving transplantations  

Project aims to recover 50% of kidneys with viability concerns and bolster transplant availability of critical organs 

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), today announced the funding of the No Kidney Left Behind project. This effort seeks to ensure the viability for successful transplant of the thousands of kidneys lovingly donated each year.  

Every year, more than 8,000 donor kidneys cannot be successfully transplanted due to concerns about their viability in a patient recipient. People who need a kidney transplant wait an average of six years, often on dialysis, and make up the majority of the 115,000 people annually awaiting an organ transplant. 34 Lives, the public benefit corporation leading the No Kidney Left Behind project, plans to develop and scale a comprehensive process to restore donated kidney viability. By first enhancing cold (hypothermic) strategies and then refining this approach with a warm (normothermic) preservation method, the project aims to recover organ function in real-time, keeping more kidneys viable longer for transplantation.  

"Recovering 50% of kidneys that might go unused would meaningfully increase supply and ultimately save many more lives,” explained Jason Roos, Ph.D., ARPA-H Scalable Solutions Mission Office Director. “Using new technology to enhance existing processes will help us scale to meet the needs of people on organ wait lists, regardless of where they live across the country.” 

ARPA-H is investing up to $44 million in this five-year effort. If successful, the resulting biomarker assessments, artificial intelligence prediction tools, and warm perfusion technology may be able to be extended to other transplantable organs. 

This award is one of multiple projects solicited through the agency’s Open Broad Agency Announcement (Open-BAA). ARPA-H continues to seek transformative ideas for health research innovation through the Mission Office Innovative Solution Openings. Continued support of each award is contingent on projects meeting aggressive milestones, typical to the ARPA-H model.  

To learn more about projects as they are awarded, visit the project awardee page.