Project Awardees
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) funds individual research projects that align with ARPA-H’s research focus areas but fall outside the scope of an ARPA-H program or initiative.
Projects are most often awarded through Mission Office Innovative Solution Openings (ISO) and historically through the Open BAA announcement. As of March 2024, ARPA-H is no longer accepting submissions for the Open BAA solicitation.
ARPA-H is pleased to announce the following project awardees.
Broad-Spectrum Antiviral (BSA) for Preventing the Exposed from Becoming Patients
Synthetic Carbohydrate Receptors (SCRs) are small molecules that can bind to N-glycans, which are prevalent on the surfaces of various pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, and cancer cells. By targeting N-glycans, SCRs have the potential to disrupt pathways central to the progression of many diseases, making them a promising therapeutic platform for treating a wide range of conditions. This project’s goal is to develop SCRs as broad-spectrum antiviral drugs and advance them through the drug-development pipeline. The project aims to demonstrate the efficacy of SCRs in treating a wide range of viral diseases, including endemic and pandemic viruses. If successful, the technology can also be applicable to treat bacterial infections and cancers.
Scalable AI-Driven Solutions for Gene Therapy Production (ENGINE)
Gene therapies hold extraordinary promise to cure diseases that currently have no effective treatments yet manufacturing bottlenecks and high production costs remain critical barriers to patient access in the United States. ENGINE will design, build, and validate an AI-powered platform that optimizes gene therapy manufacturing processes, dramatically reducing development time and cost. The platform combines advanced computational modeling with AI/ML tools to accelerate process development with fewer experimental cycles and less trial-and-error. Scalable across the biopharmaceutical industry, ENGINE will empower developers and manufacturers of all sizes to bring disease-modifying and curative gene therapies to American patients faster and more affordably.
High-Performance Processors to Drive AI Revolution in Biomedical Discovery (HYPERDRIVE)
AI has shown enormous promise to speed up biomedical research and development. Yet, its potential is limited by relying on graphics processing units (GPUs) that struggle with the growing complexity of large biomedical datasets. HYPERDRIVE aims to develop a new kind of AI acceleration hardware that leverages analog and digital computation to create faster, more energy-efficient hardware tailored for demanding biomedical algorithms. If successful, this novel analog AI processor could lead to faster discovery of life-changing medications for patients and to applications across advanced health technologies, from personalized medicine to AI-guided clinical diagnosis.
RAMMP: Robotic Assistive Mobility and Manipulation Platform Providing Independence for People with Disabilities
The goal of this program is to create a revolutionary robotic assisted mobility and manipulation platform (RAMMP), enabled through an open-source Assistive Technology (AT) Operating System (ATOS) as well as the development of a digital twin virtual environment that could revolutionize AT development. RAMMP will allow Americans greater independence through semi-autonomous operation and reduce reliance on caretakers. RAMMP robotics and artificial intelligence advances groundbreaking research and serves as a foundation for commercial applications, revolutionizing the field of robotics-based Assistive Technologies.
MIGHTY: Microbe / phage Investigation for Generalized Health TherapY
The MIGHTY project aims to improve healthcare outcomes for all Americans in an era of rising antibiotic resistance, a significant threat to public health. MIGHTY will address the limitations of current therapeutic treatments by focusing on the human microbiome's role in health and disease. While antibiotics are often vital to kill harmful bacteria, they can also disrupt beneficial microbes. Phages are a class of viruses that only infect bacteria and offer an opportunity for more precise targeting of specific bacteria of interest. MIGHTY will harness the power of phages to alter the microbiome composition in favor of healthy outcomes. These phages will be provided in chewing gum or lozenges for initial targeting of the oral microbiome, particularly focusing on communities with high rates of oral disease. The MIGHTY project has the potential to revolutionize healthcare by using phages to maintain a balance between healthy and unhealthy bacteria, influencing every organ in the human body throughout our lifespan.
CLINAC-BP: Unobtrusive Near-field Continuous Monitoring of Clinically Accurate Blood Pressure
This project will develop technology for continuous, real-world monitoring of blood pressure, a key vital sign for assessing cardiovascular health. The proposed technology will improve accuracy, efficiency, and accessibility to enable individuals and their clinicians to monitor blood pressure (BP) “beat-to-beat,” facilitating diagnosis and management of cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading cause of mortality in the United States and globally. Moreover, digital access to unprecedented continuous data will generate novel insights for disease prediction and improved care for cardiovascular and circulatory conditions. To date, an accurate and continuous blood pressure monitor in a wearable form factor for consumer use is not available. The CLINAC-BP solution leverages technology to measure changes in the arteries’ electrical properties as the heart beats that can then be converted into blood pressure values. This interdisciplinary team has designed an approach that will integrate advances in radio frequency monitoring technology, hardware, and AI/software to develop a wearable and connected continuous blood pressure monitor for clinical accuracy as the user goes about daily life, at home, at work, and in the community.
TrustShadow: Towards Scalable and Strengthened Protection of Mobile Health Data with a Novel Trusted Execution Environment
In this project, Penn State University will expand the capabilities of a novel cybersecurity solution, TrustShadow, for Body Area Networks (BANs) consisting of multiple wearable devices and unmodified apps running on smartphones/tablets. Presently, only custom Operating System (OS) kernels and custom apps are compatible with TrustZone, limiting its applicability. Developed by AMD in 2004, TrustZone is a secure execution environment as an optional extension to hardware processers. Currently, extensive modification is needed to allow a usermode app to work with TrustZone. Enabling unmodified apps to operate within TrustZone through proposed technological innovations promises greater transparency, scalability, and practicality in addressing cybersecurity risks and safeguarding personal health data compared to conventional TrustZone implementations. This project aims to utilize the proposed TrustShadow technology to provide comprehensive protection for health data outside of clinical settings.
PRO-MICROBE Exploration Topic
Yale University will develop a “microbial health score” for a cohort of single-family homes, focusing on the respiratory health of the home’s occupants. The team will use classical statistical models, machine learning, and deep learning methods to train, test, and validate an adaptable index that links microbial features to building health and quantifies the relationship between non-biological building (environmental) variables with important microbial features. This index will help predict how indoor microbes impact human health, guiding building design and operations to foster beneficial microbial communities and prevent the spread of harmful ones.
Closing the Doors to All Pathogens Through Integrated Digital Experiments
Understanding the human health importance of pathogen surveillance data is not currently possible from sequence or other molecular information alone. The Closing the Doors to All Pathogens Through Integrated Digital Experiments (DOORs) project aims to 1) Create a comprehensive computational map of pathogen-host interactions, 2) Uncover the best drug targets for an entire family of pathogens, instead of each individual pathogen as it’s done today, and 3) Test approved therapies and discover new ones via computer models. The vision for DOORs is to protect U.S. national security from emerging biological threats with an integrated digital experimental workflow that closes the loop for detecting, understanding, and responding to infectious diseases, while making these activities commercially viable through host-based therapeutic discovery.
AFC Health: The American Family Cohort: Enhancing and Validating Primary Care Data for Improving Urban and Rural Health
The AFC-HEALTH project will leverage the PRIME registry, the largest primary care data registry in the U.S., which contains Electronic Health Record (EHR) data on 8 million patients. The project will establish data partnerships to expand the registry by 50 percent, building an enriched dataset to help elucidate the social determinants of health and causal drivers of disease. By addressing critical barriers in data collection and utilization, the project will enable large-scale evaluation of the health effects of environmental, social, and educational policies. This will help enable the creation, implementation, and monitoring of evidence-based, equitable, and pragmatic primary care interventions. The use of responsible AI in healthcare will also be enhanced.