ARPA-H PRINT Program (Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue)

ARPA-H PRINT Program Overview

Geographic Scope: United States (federal funding)

Focus Areas:

• Regenerative medicine
• Tissue engineering
• Organ engineering
• Immunoengineering
• Synthetic biology
• 3D bioprinting
• Cell differentiation technologies
• Vascularized tissue construction
• Xenotransplantation and organ replacement

Program Description:
The ImPLANT project (Immunoshielded Printed Liver Assist NeoOrgan for Transplant) is a highly collaborative, multi-institutional initiative funded by ARPA-H's PRINT program. The project aims to engineer the first off-the-shelf, universal, transplant-ready liver graft to address liver failure in over 500 million patients worldwide.

Key Components:

• Development of synthetic biology-based gene circuits in human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)
• Immunoengineering to enable immune rejection evasion
• Integration of bioreactor and 3D printing technologies
• Testing in humanized animal models
• Development of manufacturing standards for clinical application

Institutions Involved:

• Wyss Institute at Harvard University (Lead)
• MIT
• University of Colorado Boulder
• Columbia University

Project Leadership:

• Principal Investigator: Christopher Chen, M.D., Ph.D. (Wyss Institute Core Faculty, Boston University)
• Co-investigators include Ron Weiss (MIT), Sangeeta Bhatia (MIT), Jason Burdick (University of Colorado Boulder), Megan Sykes (Columbia University), David Sachs (Columbia University), and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic (Columbia University)