UC San Diego awarded grant that could help transform organ transplants

Researchers at UC San Diego are among five groups nationwide selected to share $176.8 million in grant funding to explore replicating vital organs, an approach that, if successful, would revolutionize transplant surgery, making organ failure vastly more survivable.

Announced Monday by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), the awards are part of the Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue program or PRINT, which seeks to use state-of-the-art bioprinting methods to create “on-demand human organs that do not require immunosuppressive drugs.”

ARPA-H, created in 2022 with a $1 billion congressional appropriation and signed into law by President Joe Biden, is modeled on a similar federal agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that has long pursued leap-forward breakthroughs by funding big, but uncertain ideas. Just as DARPA’s long-term research funding over many decades led to major gains, including ARPANET, the decentralized communications system that evolved into the Internet, the idea is to fund goals located slightly over the horizon.

The health innovation agency’s first program, announced in 2023, funds research on tissue regeneration therapies to treat osteoarthritis. Similar efforts in obstetrics, robotic surgery, cancer screening and indoor air quality have been annou...