The U.S. government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H, is touting a new program to support the development of cheap, wearable biosensors capable of monitoring multiple signal types from the body.
The Delphi initiative—which the agency ties to the Greek oracle’s maxim “know thyself”—is set to span multiple years, with plans to support prototype development and the future integration of modular, chip-like sensor components into a variety of personal devices, including ingestible devices.
It follows previous comments from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, who said he would like to see every American wearing a wearable device by the end of the decade to track data such as glucose levels and pulse rates.
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“Anyone with a heart monitor in their watch knows how rewarding it can be to access their body’s signals in real time—but today’s limited, bulky, and expensive biosensors only scratch the surface of what’s possible,” ARPA-H Director Alicia Jackson, Ph.D., said in the agency’s announcement.
“With Delphi, ARPA-H is aiming for something fundamentally different: tiny ‘chiplets’ that can be quickly assembled into devices to monitor the deep biological signals that matter most,” added Jackson. The agency said its goals include providing real-time data on biomarkers tracking hormones, inflammation or medication levels, for example, spanning the early detection of diseases through to the closed-loop monitoring of therapies.
With initial pitches due April 8, ARPA-H said the first phase of the program will allot two years for the development of prototype components and manufacturing processes. Then an 18-month phase 2 will conduct early in vivo experiments, before a year-long phase 3 launches with human factors testing and a full clinical trial. A funding total for Delphi has not been set.
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Meanwhile, earlier this month, ARPA-H announced it had awarded funding to four teams through its Ocular Laboratory for Analysis of Biomarkers program, or OCULAB, aimed at the delivery of a combination health monitor and treatment delivery system that would reside in the tear duct of the patient’s eye.
The goal is to provide a sensor that can read tear chemistry and adjust drug dosing in real-time, with an initial focus on dry eye disease, before expanding to tackle conditions such as diabetes, depression and other ocular disorders.
OCULAB is slated to hand out up to $75.8 million over four years. The awardees include researchers from Columbia University, MIT and the University of Southern California, as well as the San Jose-based company Lacristat.
The agency also recently kicked off a $158 million effort to develop drugs aimed at the lymphatic system, plus $144 million for anti-aging research.
