The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is an independent entity within the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U ...

. Its mission is to "make pivotal investments in break-through technologies and broadly applicable platforms, capabilities, resources, and solutions that have the potential to transform important areas of medicine and health for the benefit of all patients and that cannot readily be accomplished through traditional research or commercial activity." ARPA-H was approved by Congress with the passing of H.R.2471: Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 and was signed into Public Law 117-103 by U.S. president Joe Biden on March 15, 2022. 15 days later Health and Human Services Secretary

Xavier Becerra Xavier Becerra ( ; ; born January 26, 1958) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 25th United States secretary of health and human services since March 2021. Becerra previously served as the attorney general of California from J ...

announced that the agency will have access to the resources of the National Institutes of Health, but will answer to the HHS Secretary. The agency initially has a $1 billion budget to be used before FY2025 (Oct 2024) and the Biden Administration has requested much more funding from Congress. On September 13, 2022, Biden announced his intent to appoint

Renee Wegrzyn Renee Diane Wegrzyn (born November 25, 1976) is an American applied biologist who has served as the inaugural director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health since October 2022. Education Wegrzyn earned a Bachelor of Science and Ph ...

as the agency's inaugural director, but it is still unknown where its headquarters will be located.

History

The

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adv ...

(DARPA, formerly ARPA) has been the military's in-house innovator since 1958, a year after the USSR launched

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

. DARPA is widely known for creating ARPAnet, the predecessor of the internet, and has been instrumental in advancing hardened electronics, brain-computer interface technology, drones, and stealth technology. Inspired by the success of DARPA, in 2006 the

Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is an organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responsible for leading research to overcome difficult challenges relevant to the United States Intellige ...

(IARPA) was created. This was followed by the

Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy ARPA-E, or Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy is a United States government agency tasked with promoting and funding research and development of advanced energy technologies. It is modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agenc ...

(ARPA-E) in 2009. DARPA also inspired the

Advanced Research and Invention Agency The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or ARIA, is a planned research funding agency of the UK government, announced on 19 February 2021 and expected to be fully operational by 2022. On 20 July 2022, the Department for Business, Energy and I ...

in the UK and recently the Biden administration has proposed ARPA-C for climate research. The Suzanne Wright Foundation proposed "HARPA" in 2017 to focus on pancreatic cancer and other challenging diseases. IA white paper was published by former Obama White House staffers,

Michael Stebbins Michael Stebbins is an American geneticist and former Vice President of Science and Technology at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. He previously served as Assistant Director for Biotechnology, at the White House Office of Science and Techn ...

and

Geoffrey Ling Geoffrey S. F. Ling, M.D., Ph.D., is the CEO of On Demand Pharmaceuticals. He is also a medical doctor who retired from the United States Army as a colonel. He served as the founding director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARP ...

through the Day One Project tha
proposed
the creation of a new federal agency modeled on DARPA, but focused on health. That proposal was adopted by President Biden's campaign and was the model used for establishing ARPA-H. In June 2021 noted biologists

Francis S. Collins Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health ( ...

(then head of the NIH), Tara Schwetz, Lawrence Tabak, and

Eric Lander Eric Steven Lander (born February 3, 1957) is an American mathematician and geneticist who served as the 11th director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President, serving on the presidential Cabinet. L ...

penned an article in ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'' supporting the idea. Dr. Collins became an important champion of the idea on Capitol Hill and the legislation garnered numerous sponsors in the

117th Congress The 117th United States Congress is the current meeting of the United States Congress, legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It convened ...

. In September 2022,

was appointed as the agency's inaugural director.

Research

A White House white paper identifies a number of potential directions for technological development that could occur under the direction of ARPA-H, including cancer vaccines, pandemic preparedness, and prevention technologies, less intrusive wearable blood glucose monitors, and patient-specific T-cell therapies. Additionally, the proposal suggests that ARPA-H focus on platforms to reduce health disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality and improve how medications provided are taken.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control National Institutes of Health 2022 establishments in the United States