Health Science Futures: Office-Wide Innovative Solutions Opening for Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health

This ISO seeks solution summaries and proposal submissions for projects that fall within the general scope of the ARPA-H Health Science Futures (HSF) mission office. HSF expands what is technically possible by developing approaches that will remove the scientific and technological limitations that stymie progress towards the healthcare of the future. HSF supports cutting-edge, often disease-agnostic research programs that have the potential for translational real-world change.

Considering the current healthcare challenges that we face today, the goal of achieving better health outcomes is a moving target that requires daring and adaptable solutions. HSF awardees will develop innovative technologies, tools, and platforms that can be applied to a broad range of diseases. The following interest areas define the ground-breaking research we seek to support:

Breakthrough Technologies: Paradigm shifting technologies that will change how we approach the diagnosis, treatment, and impact of diseases and conditions. • Novel approaches to improve maternal and fetal medicine, decrease maternal morbidity and mortality during birth, and the post-partum period. Efforts should include new technology to monitor, detect, and/or treat maternal and/or fetal complications with less invasive and traumatic methods.

• Foundational advances in genetic, epigenetic, cellular, tissue, and organ replacement therapies that enable personalized medical interventions at scale in a manner that is accessible, cost-effective, and designed to impact the communities of greatest need.

• Interventions that target and reverse disease pathogenesis and/or enhance plasticity to address diseases of the nervous, neuromuscular, skeletal, lymphatic, cardiovascular, and other organ systems.

• Novel approaches to diagnose and treat diseases of the lymphatic system, particularly rare diseases, with a focus on the effects of genetic expression in the lymphatic system and/or models demonstrating the relationship between lymphatic dysfunction and health and disease.

Transformative Tools: Novel, agile solutions that will move from bench to bedside quickly, facilitating revolutionary advances in medical care.

• Development of tools that counter idiosyncratic, off-target, or chronic effects of medicines that are commonly used or that are being used experimentally to treat or prevent disease.

• Development of bionics to restore sight, hearing, taste, or smell.

• Site-selective neuromodulation to regulate specific physiological functions and treat chronic health conditions such as inflammation, pain, and metabolic or endocrine disorders.

• Synthetic biology approaches to diagnosing, treating, and/or curing a multitude of diseases.

• Novel physics and/or chemistry-based approaches to improve imaging that reduces cost, increases availability, expands capability, improves resolution, reduces exposure to radiation, and accommodates pediatric patient populations.

• Integrated sensing and delivery devices for treating and diagnosing chronic health conditions, including mental health conditions or substance use disorders.

• Miniaturization of complex hardware to enable broader access to pediatric and other patient populations, as well as portability, such as diagnostic, treatment, imaging, or other devices.

Platform Systems: Adaptable, multi-application systems and technologies that are reconfigurable for a wide variety of clinical needs

• Novel molecular platform approaches, including the modulation of host systems, delivery to targets with spatial and temporal precision, and mitigation of off-target effects to accelerate interventions that dramatically improve health outcomes.

• New approaches to accelerate and routinize mammalian and microbial cellular engineering to enable next generation therapeutic applications, develop multiscale interventions, and automate hypothesis generation and discovery to expand those applications to disease states in which cellular therapies have not traditionally been employed.

• Innovative approaches at the intersection of artificial intelligence, high performance computing (including quantum computing) and biological systems, including enabling de novo design of biomolecules with entirely new phenotypes.

Other high-quality submissions that propose revolutionary technologies that meet the goals of HSF will be considered even if they do not address the topics listed above.

Proposals are expected to use innovative approaches to enable revolutionary advances in medicine and healthcare, and the science and technology underlying these areas. While approaches that are disease agnostic are encouraged, ARPA-H welcomes proposals that bring radically new insights to address specific diseases including, but not limited to, cancer, diabetes, neurological diseases, pediatric and maternal/fetal health, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular disease.

Specifically excluded are proposals that represent an evolutionary or incremental advance in the current state of the art or technology that has reached the clinical trial stage. An example of this type of proposal might include the request to fund clinical trials of an otherwise developed product. Additionally, proposals directed towards policy changes, traditional education and training, or center coordination, formation, or development, and construction of physical infrastructure are outside the scope of the ARPA-H mission.