ARPA-H Apoia a Impressão de Órgãos sob Demanda com $176M

Escassez de Órgãos e o Caso para a Bioprintagem sob Demanda

Organ donations are a key medical tool keeping millions of people alive, with almost 50,000 transplants performed yearly in just the USA. Still, the supply of organs is insufficient to satisfy demand, with 13 people dying every day in the USA while waiting for an organ transplant, and over 103,000 people on the national waiting list.

Essa escassez pode ser parcialmente aliviada com mais doações de órgãos, que continuam sendo um foco político vital. No entanto, encontrar um doador compatível costuma ser tão desafiador quanto a escassez geral de doadores.

Ideally, the ability to “produce” any organ on demand would offer a superior solution. But it would still not remove the problem of compatibility, or the need to take anti-rejection drugs, which weaken the immune system. Transplanted organs also tend to have a shorter lifespan than the original.

“Even when patients do get a transplant, organs usually last only 15-23 years and require a lifetime of drugs to prevent rejection, which are expensive and can cause serious health problems.”

The current situation also leads to stark inequality in outcomes. Because of factors like geographic distance and the need for specific blood type matches, rural populations and minority groups face significantly higher hurdles. The data on these disparities is concrete:

• Representação na Lista de Espera: Enquanto os afro‑americanos representam aproximadamente 28% da lista de espera para transplante, eles receberam apenas cerca de 23% dos transplantes em 2024.
• Desigualdade nos Transplantes: Por outro lado, os americanos brancos compunham aproximadamente 39% da lista de espera, mas receberam quase 49% de todos os transplantes.
• Disponibilidade de Doadores: A correspondência biológica frequentemente requer doadores de origens étnicas semelhantes, porém as taxas de doação variam amplamente. Indivíduos brancos representaram cerca de 67% de todos os doadores em 2024, comparado a aproximadamente 13% para negros e 15% para hispânicos.

Órgãos sob demanda que pudessem ser implantados em qualquer paciente, independentemente da demografia, seriam um grande equalizador neste sistema.

This is the exact goal of a series of awards granted by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ARPA-H was created in 2022 with a $1 billion congressional appropriation and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

“Developing universally matched organs has never been done before in the history of transplantation. Printing a precisely matched, functional human organ will fundamentally change what is possible in transplant medicine and will save countless lives.”

– Alicia Jackson, Ph.D., Diretora da ARPA-H

Its Personalized Regenerative Immunocompetent Nanotechnology Tissue (PRINT) program is looking to encourage the development of organ printing technology that does not require immunosuppressive drugs.

“The goal is to use either a patient’s own cells or cells from a biobank to quickly – within hours – produce immune-matched replacement organs, such as kidneys, hearts, and livers.”

O que é a Bioprintagem 3D e Por que os Órgãos são Difíceis

3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is now a relatively familiar technology. It started with plastic filaments and is now becoming feasible with many materials, including metals. The next frontier is printing organic tissues.

By adding cells individually, in complex 3D layouts and multiple layers, 3D bioprinting can replicate the exact shape and texture organs require. One of the first successful proofs-of-concept was done at Wake Forest University in 2016, with a functional and viable 3D-printed ear. (You can read more about bioprinting on this Wake Forest University page, one of the beneficiaries of the ARPA-H funding.)

The bioprinting market, for now mostly limited to niche use cases and academic research, is already a $2.91B market (in 2025) and is expected to grow by 12.54% CAGR until 2034.

The idea is to either produce organs from a patient’s own cells, removing all risk of immune reaction, or to use cells from a biobank modified to achieve the same result. The technology has recently made good progress, including using ultrasound for guided bioprinting, bioprinting pancreas islets for diabetes treatment, and creating 3D printed skin for lab experiments and skin grafts.

Programa PRINT da ARPA-H Explicado

Visão geral

The goal of the program is to achieve what has been so far an elusive target: 3D print a human-sized organ, with all the cells, blood vessels, and tissue materials that allow it to function as a heart, filter blood and produce urine as a kidney, and uphold metabolism as a liver.

A success of the program, for now focused on these 3 key organs, could later be expanded to the pancreas and lungs. The PRINT program total is up to $176.8 million over 5 years. Details and timing of the exact payment will depend on each of the selected research teams meeting aggressive and accelerated milestones.

O programa foi lançado em 2024, requiring proposals from researchers focused on three technical areas:

• Gerar todos os tipos celulares necessários do órgão a partir da(s) melhor(es) fonte(s) de células.
• Fabricação em larga escala dos tipos celulares do órgão.
• Biofabricação de órgãos e testes in vivo que habilitam IND.

Em janeiro de 2026, anunciou as equipes de pesquisa selecionadas para o programa.

Quem Recebeu o Financiamento PRINT da ARPA-H

Carnegie Mellon University

A universidade baseada em Pittsburgh aims to create a cost-effective immune-silent bioprinted liver that is ready for first-in-human trials in five years, under the project named LIVE, or Liver Immunocompetent Volumetric Engineering.

Receberá $28.5M da ARPA-H para este projeto.

The engineered livers will be initially produced to address acute liver failure, with the long-term goal of addressing all liver failure.

“The liver we are creating would last for about two to four weeks. It would give patients time for their own liver to regenerate, and then, they would not need a liver transplant, freeing up those livers for other patients.”

– Adam Feinberg, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon

Wake Forest University

The university located in Winston-Salem, N.C., will seek to produce clinical-grade vascularized renal tissue to augment renal function in patients suffering from kidney disease.

This project will work in parallel with both preclinical trials and the development of a plan for commercialization. This way, the technique should not only perform well medically, but also be viable from an economic point of view, providing “a cost-efficient solution to the nation’s growing donor organ shortage.”

Wyss Institute

O instituto de pesquisa de Harvard, localizado em Boston, will develop universal, clinical-scale liver tissue from adult stem cells.

The Lewis lab has created another method, called SWIFT (sacrificial writing into functional tissue), in which hundreds of thousands of stem-cell-derived aggregates are concentrated into a dense, living matrix of organ-building blocks (OBBs) that contains about 200 million cells per milliliter.

With a focus on adequate vascularization (blood vessel development), the research team hopes their technology can benefit all sorts of patients with liver dysfunction.

University of California, San Diego

The university will print livers using stem cells produced by local firm Allele Biotechnology. It will receive around $25M from ARPA-H for this task.

The liver will be tailored to an individual’s unique anatomy and physiology, without the need for donor tissue or immunosuppressants. This should ideally ensure long-term functionality and integration of the 3D-printed organs.

“The difference between us and others who do extrusion printing is that we print the whole page at the same time, and that’s truly 10,000 times faster than what they do.”

– Shaochen Chen, Professor in the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering

Human trials are expected in five years if everything goes according to plan.

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

The Dallas-based university will receive nearly $25M for the development of a transplantation-ready liver capable of providing full function in patients with liver failure. The program is called Vascularized Immunocompetent Tissue as an Alternative Liver (VITAL).

“UTSW has a robust solid organ transplant program that recently celebrated its 1,000th liver transplant. This project represents a bold step toward advancing patient care through biomedical innovation. It unites engineers, clinicians, and scientists to transform discovery into real‑world solutions, shaping a future where functional organ printing becomes reality.”

– Dr. Samuel Achilefu, Ph.D., Presidente inaugural de Engenharia Biomédica

This means not only a functional organ metabolically, but also reconnecting blood vessels to restore blood flow and establishing a bile duct system for fluid transport.

Por que a ARPA-H Pode Acelerar os Cronogramas de Impressão de Órgãos

3D-printing organs has been a trendy idea that is only slowly making its way into practical clinical applications. This is because recreating something as complex as organs—made of hundreds of billions of cells with many complex sub-types—requires mastering details that are often poorly understood.

Designing an organ from scratch is akin to assembling a jet engine from known parts without understanding exactly how the engine works. Luckily, living cells, especially stem cells, are designed to self-organize into a full organ, helping the researchers.

The sudden influx of money by ARPA-H into this topic should help accelerate the timeline to start seeing printable organs that are potentially superior to the usual donated organs.

Investindo em Bioprintagem 3D e Medicina Regenerativa

United Therapeutics

A United Therapeutics tem uma longa história como pioneira em bioprintagem, tendo estabelecido notavelmente uma parceria com a 3D Systems Corporation (DDD ) sobre o tema já em 2017.

The company is focused on rare diseases (interstitial lung disease – ILD, Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension – PAH, and neuroblastoma) and end-stage lung diseases.

This also means that while 3D bioprinting is important for the future of the company, it is also a traditional biotech company at the same time. This gives the company more than $1.6B in TTM (Trailing Twelve Months) operating cash flow and a solid cash reserve to keep financing innovation without risking excessive dilution of existing shareholders.

The company’s revenues have steadily risen in the 2020s, in large part thanks to its growing sales from Tyvaso, the most prescribed U.S. prostacyclin (for the treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension – PAH), which still grew 10% year-to-year in 2025.

In bioprinting, the company is still at the R&D stage, with its most advanced product for lung transplant, with alternative kidney and liver also in development.

Outside of organs, the company’s R&D schedule is mostly focused on expanding Tyvaso’s applications to increase its sales.

So, as 3D printing is getting a lot more attention and research budget, companies like United Therapeutics, with a head start in the field and already starting clinical trials, might have a clear advantage in commercializing an early form of the technology, likely followed by several decades of improvement (and the associated renewed or new patents).

Últimas Notícias e Desenvolvimentos das Ações da United Therapeutics (UTHR)