How Dallas fits in newest federal agency
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ARPA-H director Renee Wegrzyn visited Dallas last week. Photo: Courtesy of Adam Lee/ARPA-H
Dallas is poised to play a big role in the federal government's newest agency, an independent entity within the National Institutes of Health.
The big picture: President Biden proposed the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) last year to support biomedical and health breakthroughs.
- The $2.5 billion agency's customer experience hub will be housed in Pegasus Park. Other Texas cities and organizations can also apply to become ARPA-H's spokes.
- The hub will help ARPA-H develop "accessible, needed and readily adopted" health solutions, with a focus on "equitable health outcomes for all," the agency says.
Driving the news: ARPA-H is already working on precision cancer surgery and proposals to reverse osteoarthritis.
- ARPA-H director Renee Wegrzyn visited Dallas last week to unveil an initiative to improve clinical trials.
The latest: We spoke to Wegrzyn about her vision for ARPA-H and the role of North Texas.
Q: What are some breakthroughs that you hope to be able to explore through ARPA-H?
A: I'm aging, and I certainly think reversing osteoarthritis would be a wonderful capability but what's really important is if we achieve that goal, it is a tremendous paradigm-shifting success.
- But even if we don't, along the way we're going to learn about cellular manufacturing, new cell therapies and enrolling a diverse clinical trial population that's representative of the demographics of disease. If we make strides across all those, it will really benefit the entire ecosystem.
Q: Our country is divided right now. What do you think this agency can do to help unify us?
A: I've met now, maybe 100 members of Congress, and in every single one of those conversations we find a common denominator of being frustrated by the speed at which we deliver health care solutions. Everybody can get on board with bringing innovation and moving faster and doing it better, and engaging with local communities to make sure we're delivering to states across the country.
Q: What is the goal of the customer experience hub that will be based in Dallas?
A: We're designing things in partnership with patients and health care providers so they want to enthusiastically adapt what ARPA-H makes. Party to these conversations are those investors that want to sustain that investment, once ARPA-H has bought down the risk. We're going to go after moon shots that most venture capitalists would say, "You know what, I'm not going to fund that, but come back to me when you've proved 'X.'"
Q: What were your first impressions of Dallas and Pegasus Park?
A: One of the things that's really exciting about this location is the integration of nonprofits, small companies, government organizations that are all under one roof — which is pretty unusual for collaboration. Having all of those close together is a really important spark for innovation.
Q: What role can North Texans play in ARPA-H?
A: If you're a small company, a university, a community health center, you can apply to become a spoke. If you're a citizen that wants to learn more, stay involved through our newsletter. We're launching a program at least every other week, if not every week. The exciting part about ARPA-H is that it changes all the time, by design.