Berkeley researchers receive ARPA-H awards

UC Berkeley researchers in two multi-institutional teams have won major awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to fund pioneering biomedical research. Projects in microbiome engineering and in implantable biologic drug delivery will receive up to $22.7 million and $34.9 million, respectively, from ARPA-H, a federal funding agency that supports transformative biomedical and health breakthroughs.

Adam Arkin, professor of bioengineering, is the lead principal investigator for the three-year project Pro/Prebiotic Regulation for Optimized Treatment and Eradication of Clinical Threats (PROTECT). Berkeley researchers, in collaboration with a team from UC San Diego led by professor Karsten Zengler, will use microbiome engineering to create probiotic bacterial communities that prevent and treat lung pathogens — Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus — in immunocompromised people, such as those with cystic fibrosis or on respirators.

“The concept is that we can assemble and differentially feed a set of natural ‘healthy’ lung microbes and cause them to essentially ‘eat the lunch’ of any invading pathogen,” said Arkin. “That is, they literally eat all the metabolites that a pathogen needs to either establish itself or propagate in that environment.”

This approach should also be generalizable to other conditions and body sites, such as wounds or the gut.

Rikky Muller, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, is part of a team led by Carnegie Mellon University that will create implantable bioelectronic devices to address obesity and diabetes through a six-year project called RX On-site Generation Using Electronics (ROGUE). ROGUE will precisely stimulate cells within a device to produce drugs to decrease a person’s appetite and cause weight loss — while eliminating the need for periodic injections.

The bioelectronic devices will interface with a secure software platform or app, allowing users to track their condition directly, and will be programmed to deliver therapeutic molecules to the patient on demand for an extended period. This real-time drug delivery and disease tracking system is part of ARPA-H’s Resilient Extended Automatic Cell Therapies (REACT) program.