Proposed $6.5 billion biomedical agency progresses in Congress

Lawmakers are hewing closely to the president’s proposal for a new $6.5 billion science agency as part of a sweeping measure to deliver medical breakthroughs. Known as Cures 2.0, new bipartisan legislation would authorize Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) and also touch on almost every part of the health-care system – from the authorization of medical research to the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of medical products and Medicare’s payments for cutting-edge treatments.

First proposed by President Biden earlier this year, ARPA-H would be modeled after the similarly named Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has a reputation for accelerating the development of breakthrough technologies for the military. DARPA’s funding approach depends less on traditional peer review of ideas and more on hard-charging program managers empowered to award contracts that can be abruptly canceled if researchers don’t meet desired milestones. Biden and others believe a similar model of placing informed bets on high-risk, but potentially high-payoff ideas could also produce biomedical advances.

Biden’s full budget request to Congress offered a bit more insight into the administration’s vision for ARPA-H. The agency “will have a distinctive culture and organizational structure and will complement NIH’s existing research portfolio, providing an agile and flexible arm to advance biomedical science quickly and robustly.” The budget also describes an external advisory board that will help ARPA-H coordinate with other agencies and generate ideas.

Read more about the legislation and check out a new Science Magazine commentary on the proposal by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric S. Lander and NIH Director Dr. Francis S. Collins.