The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), has awarded up to $37 million in funding to the Thymus Rejuvenation project, led by Thymmune Therapeutics Inc.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) reported the opening of a series of regional offices that focus on both administrative and research assignments, a development that may bolster cures and treatments for tough-to-treat conditions. However, the U.S. House and Senate have different ideas about how much money the agency will receive in 2024, casting a cloud of uncertainty over how many projects the agency will be able to finance in the twelve months that will start on Oct. 1, 2023.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) reported the opening of a series of regional offices that focus on both administrative and research assignments, a development that may bolster cures and treatments for tough-to-treat conditions. However, the U.S. House and Senate have different ideas about how much money the agency will receive in 2024, casting a cloud of uncertainty over how many projects the agency will be able to finance in the twelve months that will start on Oct. 1, 2023.
The Biden administration has released the National Cancer Plan, a framework that expands and builds on the Cancer Moonshot program which came into being in 2016. The National Cancer Plan includes a strategies section that calls for development of new methods for detecting cancer and new imaging technologies for early cancer detection, just two provisions that would seem to portend good times ahead for companies that manufacture these products.
With a goal of manufacturing biotechnology in the U.S. that’s invented in the U.S., President Joe Biden signed an executive order Sept. 12 launching a National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative that’s intended to strengthen the country’s bioeconomy, build stronger supply chains, and better utilize and secure biological data.
Ignoring congressional sentiment, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced the formal establishment of the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health as an independent entity within the NIH.
The legislation that would renew a number of FDA user fee programs, the Food and Drug Amendments Act (FDA Act) of 2022, has passed the first legislative hurdle in a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, but there are several issues with the bill. According to members of the subcommittee, the issues include an absence of provisions for medical device servicing, and the absence of legislation for FDA regulation of lab-developed tests (LDTs), issues that are unlikely to be resolved before the legislation is passed out of the House.
With its focus on transformative high-risk, high-reward research to drive biomedical breakthroughs, the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) may be a good concept, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of increased investment in basic research at the NIH, according to the bipartisan leadership of U.S. House appropriators.
Making his first in-person appearance April 27 before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra was prepared to answer questions about President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2023 budget that would increase HHS’ discretionary budget to $127 billion, nearly a 27% increase over the 2021 enacted level.
Witnesses at a Feb. 8 hearing in the U.S. Congress emphasized that the proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency – Health (ARPA-H) must be an independent agency to avoid a crippling case of bureaucratic torpor. However, several members of Congress and one of the witnesses made the case that ARPA-H would increase duplicative taxpayer spending without providing a commensurate increase in productive research in the life sciences, signaling that establishment of this new DARPA-like agency is anything but guaranteed.
