Draper and Partners Awarded ARPA-H Funding to End Cold-Chain Dependence for Cell Therapies and Cancer Drugs

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Draper received up to $7.3 million other transaction award (OTA) from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) for Phase 1 of the agency's BioStabilization Systems (BoSS) program, which aims to develop new methods to produce, store, and transport cell-based biologic medicines at room temperature. ARPA-H has committed funding of up to $87 million across the four-year program. 

The Reversible Ambient Temperature (RAB) team includes Draper as the Administrative Lead and Likarda as the Technical Lead. Other performers on the RAB team are Case Bioscience, CPSI Biotech, Fresenius Kabi, MiNK Therapeutics, and Sabrina Spencer, Ph.D., University of Colorado.

Biologics are complex medical treatments made from living organisms such as cells, genes and proteins that target specific parts of the immune system or natural body processes to stop inflammation or fight diseases, including certain cancers. Because biologics are made from living tissue, they are extremely fragile and sensitive to temperature changes. To maintain their viability, biologics must be kept frozen at ultra-cold temperatures in an unbroken "cold chain" from factory to patient. This cold chain is expensive, complex, and hard to scale. As a result, biologic treatments are only available at a handful of specialized medical centers.

BoSS seeks to overcome this temperature barrier by pursuing new technologies that enable the development, transport, and storage of biologics at room temperature, without any refrigeration. By bringing long-term shelf-life stability to cell-based therapies and biologics, BoSS is taking a "200-degree leap" – from -196°C to room temperature – to make life saving cell therapies as easy to store and ship as aspirin.

"Medicines manufactured from living cells represent a significant advancement in our ability to treat certain diseases and cancers. But the nature of these therapeutics, particularly the unbroken cold-chain requirement, makes them prohibitively expensive and inaccessible to most Americans," said Kathryn Brinsfield, vice president and general manager, Biotechnology Systems at Draper. "The goal of this program is to expand patient access by eliminating the deep freeze requirement."

The BoSS performer teams will work across two technical areas: interventions to stabilize cells for storage and then reactivate them on demand, and the creation of novel processing systems that ensure these interventions are efficient and scalable for manufacturing.

The RAB team's biostabilization strategy, led by Likarda, will focus on simultaneous control of cell state, physical environment, and the cellular stress responses activated during freezing, dehydration, storage, and recovery. The bioprocessing engineering, led by Draper, will convert the manual steps of biostabilization into an automated, commercially viable workflow and will develop custom instruments to scale up the processes.

"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," said Jason Fiering, distinguished technical staff at Draper.

The performer teams will progress through a four-year, multi-phase program structure, with performance evaluated against increasingly stringent benchmarks for cell viability, production speed, and shelf-life stability.

This research was, in part, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the United States Government.

About Draper

Draper is a non-profit research, development, and manufacturing company that solves some of the nation's most important challenges. With more than 2,800 employees working in collaboration across 12 locations, Draper delivers transformative, mission-driven solutions that successfully meet our customers' requirements. These efforts focus on four critical mission areas: Strategic Systems, Space Systems, Electronic Systems, and Biotechnology Systems. To extend our legacy into the future, the Draper Scholars program engages with the next generation of innovators while DraperSPARX™ seeks to partner with startups and small businesses that can further our mission. To learn more about Draper, visit www.draper.com. Follow Draper on Linked In and Instagram. 

SOURCE Draper Laboratory