Tessel Biosciences Awarded Up To $4.2M Through the ARPA-H CATALYST Program to Advance Drug Safety and ADMET Prediction

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 5, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Tessel Biosciences announced today that it will receive up to $4.2 million as part of a contract award to the PREDICTS consortium by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) through its Computational ADME-Tox and Physiology Analysis for Safer Therapeutics (CATALYST) program. The PREDICTS consortium, led by Deep Origin, includes Tessel Biosciences, Ginkgo Bioworks, Netrias, and MIDO, with product sponsors ImmVue and Sanford Burnham Prebys.

Tessel operates at the intersection of organoid biology and artificial intelligence, building virtual tissues that simulate how drugs act in human patient-derived cells. These models predict functional outcomes in a dish that mimic clinical endpoints in people. By better simulating human biology, virtual tissues reduce the need for animal testing to design safe and effective drugs. Tessel has used its virtual tissues to advance its own drug candidates for lung disease and chronic inflammation.

As part of the PREDICTS consortium, Tessel will develop and scale up primary human tissue models of the gut, kidney, and blood-brain barrier to measure how drugs move through these critical boundaries. The data generated will support computational modeling of small molecule ADMET properties by the PREDICTS consortium. This data will also be made publicly available to advance research across the field.

"This award underscores how virtual tissues will transform human health," said Naren Tallapragada, PhD, CEO of Tessel Biosciences. "By combining complex in vitro models and cutting-edge AI, we're creating a future where we can predict how any drug will behave across organs and diseases without relying on animal testing. At Tessel, we're big believers in amphibious work that combines wet lab experiments and dry lab computation to model biology. We're grateful for the opportunity to scale up these efforts, with the support of ARPA-H and all of our fellow consortium members."

Tessel's contributions to the CATALYST program will accelerate the use of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for safer drug development through simulation. This work will also broaden the scope of Tessel's virtual tissue models, extending Tessel's platform for efficacy prediction and therapeutics design.

About Tessel Biosciences:
Tessel Biosciences builds virtual tissues to design real drugs. Tessel predicts what drugs do in people by simulating their effects on the function of human patient-derived cells. Through amphibious work at the intersection of tissue biology and AI, Tessel enables the design of better therapeutics – starting with its own pipeline of drugs for lung disease and beyond.

Contact:
Naren Tallapragada
Chief Executive Officer
Tessel Biosciences, Inc.
[email protected]
https://www.tessel.bio

SOURCE Tessel Biosciences