Eight Research Teams Receive $150 Million to Advance Cancer Surgery

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services, last week announced $150 million in award funding for technologies to improve tumor removal surgeries as part of the Precision Surgical Interventions (PSI) Program. The PSI program was initiated in 2023 to create breakthroughs in detecting and treating all types of cancer

These funds fall under the umbrella of the Cancer Moonshot initiative that aims to prevent 4 million cancer deaths by 2047 and improve cancer care. Surgical removal of tumors is often the first step in cancer treatment, and the PSI program is intended to incentivize development of novel improvements in cancer surgery.

The funds are being awarded to eight research teams across the US “to develop methods and techniques to improve cancer detection and increase the visibility of critical anatomical structures during surgery,” per the Agency. The awardees are grouped into two technical areas: cancer localization and health structure localization. 

Technical area 1-A awardees will focus on visualizing the surface of excised tumors and identifying if any cancer cells remain:

• Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana
• Rice University in Houston, Texas
• University of Washington in St. Louis, Missouri

Technical area 1-B awardees will focus on identifying microscopic cancer remnants inside the patient to help the surgeon remove all remaining cancer cells before the end of the procedure:

• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland (also a technical award 2 awardee)

Technical area 2 awardees will focus on making critical anatomy more visible to surgeons: 

• Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire
• Johns Hopkins University (also a technical award 1-B awardee)
• Cision Vision in Mountain View, California