ARPA-H has committed up to $87 million over four years to its BioStabilization Systems (BoSS) program, which aims to make cell-based biologic medicines storable and shippable at room temperature — a direct attack on the cold chain that drives cost and loss across the cell therapy supply chain.

The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, named three teams for Phase I. Each must deliver technologies that stabilize cells for storage and reactivate them on demand, plus processing systems that make those interventions efficient and scalable for manufacturing. The first phase began in September and runs 15 months. Across the multi-phase program, teams will face increasingly stringent benchmarks for cell viability, production speed, and shelf-life stability.

What are the funded teams building?

The Reversible Ambient Temperature (RAB) team disclosed an initial award of up to $7.3 million. Draper serves as administrative lead; Likarda, a hydrogel technology company, leads the technical work. CaseBioscience, CPSI Biotech, Fresenius Kabi, MiNK Therapeutics, and the University of Colorado round out the group.

The team's technical plan is concrete:

• AI-assisted design of experiments to optimize formulation, quiescence induction parameters, hydrogel composition, and recovery media
• Freeze-assisted droplet drying to achieve a stable dry product
• Likarda's Core-Shell Spherification hydrogel technology to encapsulate living cells while maintaining viability and function
• Draper-led bioprocessing engineering to convert manual biostabilization steps into an automated, commercially viable workflow with custom instruments for scale-up

Jason Fiering, distinguished technical staff at Draper, framed the division of labor directly: "The RAB team brings together deep expertise in cryoprotection, encapsulation, and cell state, with a focus on protecting cell viability throughout the stabilization and reanimation process, and the team has direct experience bringing products to market. Working in parallel, our interdisciplinary engineering team will develop the customized instruments needed to transfer these processes to clinical manufacturing environments."

A second team, led by DesiCorp with the University of Louisville, UT Austin, Via Therapeutics, VeriSIM Life, and Ossium Health, will use high-throughput screening to identify biocompatible formulations that slow cellular metabolism, combined with AI-assisted process optimization of a thin-film freeze-drying (TFFD) system. UT Austin researchers will optimize critical process parameters and contribute aseptic processing and scale-up expertise. No award amount for this team has been disclosed.

Can dry-state preservation actually work?

The field's track record warrants scrutiny. John Baust, PhD, a biopreservation expert collaborating with CPSI Biotech, acknowledged the history: "The concept of preserving living cells in a dry state has been pursued for more than two decades, but significant scientific and engineering barriers have yielded limited success." He called BoSS an opportunity "to tackle this from multiple scientific and engineering directions simultaneously" that, if successful, "could represent a paradigm shift in how biologics are preserved, stored, and distributed."

The third team, led by UC Davis with Mayo Clinic, Case Western Reserve University, University of Georgia, and Sersense, received up to $6 million initially for its CYBORGEL project. The work builds on research from Cheemeng Tan, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis, who previously formed water-rich polymer networks inside living cells — intracellular gelation — that halt cell division while preserving cellular function.

CYBORGEL will test whether that process reduces the cost and complexity of storing, transporting, and delivering cellular therapies, and whether the cells remain therapeutically useful after reanimation. Planned studies include reanimated CAR T cells in existing cancer immunotherapy trials and placental mesenchymal stem cells for spina bifida, an intervention under development at UC Davis.

Who checks the claims?

ATCC will serve as the independent verification and validation partner, supplying working cell banks of government-selected cell types for demonstrations. It will also provide what ARPA-H describes as unbiased assessments of preserved product viability and function, and of the preservation systems' design features — a structure that keeps vendor performance claims at arm's length from the teams themselves.

For R&D managers in cell and gene therapy, the program targets a quantifiable pain point: cold chain logistics constrain distribution and product losses remain a recurring budget line. All measured results to date come from prior academic work; the viability, speed, and shelf-life figures against BoSS benchmarks remain to be demonstrated over the 15-month Phase I, with findings feeding decisions on which technologies advance under the remaining program phases.