ARPA-H Awards $177 Million to Five Teams Racing to Bioprint Transplantable Human Organs Within Five Years
ARPA-H has awarded up to $176.8 million to five teams building 3D-bioprinted kidneys and livers designed to work without immunosuppressive drugs, targeting first-in-human trials within five years.
The Program
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) announced on January 12 that it has selected five research teams to receive awards totaling up to $176.8 million over five years through its Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program. The goal is to develop the capability to 3D bioprint functional, personalized human organs — primarily kidneys and livers — that do not require immunosuppressive drugs after transplantation.
The program targets what its manager, Ryan Spitler, described as a fundamental transformation: “We want to change the foundation of transplantation itself,” he stated.
Approximately 120,000 people in the United States are on organ transplant waiting lists at any given time, while only about 45,000 transplants are performed annually. The shortage results in thousands of preventable deaths each year. Even patients who receive transplants face a lifetime of immunosuppressive medication, which carries risks including increased susceptibility to infections and cancer.
The Teams
Five university-led teams received awards, with four focused on liver bioprinting and one on kidneys.
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine received up to $24.8 million to bioprint functional kidney tissue. The team, led by Dr. Anthony Atala and co-principal investigator Dr. James Yoo, will combine specialized bioinks with patient-derived cells to produce clinical-grade vascularized renal tissue containing all major kidney cell types. Partners include Rice University, the University of Maryland, the University of Texas at El Paso, and PrintBio Inc.
Rice University’s Antonios Mikos, who leads the university’s Biomaterials Lab, is developing a library of adaptable bioinks and working on vascularizing the printed kidney constructs to enable long-term functionality within the body.
UT Southwestern Medical Center received up to $25 million for the VITAL (Vascularized Immunocompetent Tissue as an Alternative Liver) project. Led by Muhammad Rizwan, the team plans to convert patient liver cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), differentiate them into the necessary liver cell types, combine them with hydrogel bioink, and bioprint functional livers complete with blood vessels and bile ducts. The team estimates bioprinted livers could be produced in 10 to 13 weeks, with animal testing and potential human trials targeted within approximately five years.
UC San Diego received up to $25.8 million under principal investigator Shaochen Chen. The UC San Diego approach uses digitally controlled light patterns to solidify cell-laden biomaterials layer by layer, creating complex tissue structures with intricate blood vessel networks. The team is also incorporating artificial intelligence to design sophisticated vascular architectures. Industry partner Allele Biotechnology will contribute personalized stem cell generation and manufacturing capabilities.
“Our ultimate goal — the holy grail — is to help solve the organ shortage by printing real, living human organs that can restore health and quality of life,” Chen stated.
Carnegie Mellon University and the Wyss Institute also received awards, with Carnegie Mellon focused on developing a cost-effective, immune-silent bioprinted liver with first-in-human trials targeted within five years, and the Wyss Institute pursuing a universal, clinical-scale liver tissue platform derived from adult stem cells.
Technical Approach
The PRINT program structures the bioprinting challenge into three core technical areas. The first is cell generation — obtaining the necessary cell types through blood draws, biopsies, or biobank sources. The second is large-scale manufacturing of sufficient cell quantities to build an entire organ. The third is organ biofabrication itself — the actual printing and subsequent safety and efficacy testing.
A central innovation across all five teams is the use of immune-matched or immune-silent approaches. Rather than relying on donor organs that trigger rejection, each team is developing methods to create organs from either a patient’s own cells or from universal biobank cells engineered to evade immune detection. If successful, this would eliminate the need for lifelong immunosuppressive drugs that current transplant recipients must take.
Atala, who has spent decades at the forefront of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest, described the PRINT program as a demonstration of “how tissue engineering can be coupled with bioprinting to create a positive disruption.”
Context and Outlook
The PRINT program represents the largest coordinated federal investment in organ bioprinting to date. ARPA-H, which was established in 2022 and modeled on DARPA, has a mandate to pursue high-risk, high-reward health research that traditional funding agencies avoid.
The five-year timeline is aggressive. No team has yet demonstrated a fully functional, transplantable bioprinted organ at human scale, and significant technical hurdles remain — particularly in vascularization, the process of creating the dense network of blood vessels required to keep printed tissue alive. ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson has acknowledged the ambition, noting that performer awards are contingent upon teams meeting “aggressive and accelerated milestones”.
The program’s vision extends beyond kidneys and livers. ARPA-H has indicated that the technologies developed under PRINT could eventually be adapted for other organs including the pancreas and lungs, though those applications are not part of the current awards.