AMPEL BioSolutions Selected as Member of ARPA-H Customer Experience Hub Spoke Network

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- AMPEL BioSolutions has been selected as a member - or "spoke" - of the Customer Experience Hub of ARPANET-H, a nationwide health innovation network launched by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).  This national effort is designed to accelerate commercialization of health breakthroughs for populations that urgently need them.  

The Customer Experience Hub in Dallas joins Boston and the Nation's Capital as the three hubs across the country tasked with creating better health outcomes for all by accelerating commercialization of groundbreaking technologies that focus on health in two ways, by optimizing clinical trials for disease-altering therapies and implementing technologies that monitor & predict health outcomes.  This "prevent-detect-treat" effort connects biotechnology companies with funders, universities and non-profits in order to scale health breakthroughs.  

AMPEL's ARPA-H spoke election highlights one-of-a-kind Precision Health tests that predict inflammation and abnormal drug targets from gene expression utilizing "explainable AI" (xAI).  Other corporate Hub Spoke members include Verily, Datavant, Velsara, QuidelOrtho and Biolabs.  Being a spoke provides several benefits including potential funding, dedicated networking and opportunities to provide input into ARPA-H's challenge areas & priorities.

"We are thrilled to have our cutting-edge precision health technology for individuals and experience improving clinical trial outcomes included in the ARPA-H Experience Hub," said Dr. Amrie Grammer, AMPEL's President and Chief Scientific Officer. "Partnering and collaboration across disease areas is a core mission that we are excited to implement with fellow spoke members."

"Delivery of personalized precision medicine is a crucial value that drives development and commercialization of AMPEL's cloud-based Genomic Platform," said Dr. Peter Lipsky, AMPEL's CEO and Chief Medical Officer. "Detecting and decoding inflammation early in an addressable way is key to living a long and healthy life across all communities, especially in rural and underserved areas of the United States that are key populations in the mission statement of ARPA-H."

The Customer Experience Hub of 375+ members is managed by the non-profit Advanced Technologies International.  The nationwide hub-and-spoke model connects entities regardless of location with the aim of delivering improved health outcomes for all Americans.  As a Customer Experience spoke, AMPEL has access to funding and flexible contracting for expeditious product execution and scaling.  

ARPA-H's selection of AMPEL is timely for their portfolio of blood and biopsy tests for personalized precision health.  Until now, therapeutic intervention to decrease inflammation and autoimmunity has been a trial-and-error endeavor that often takes years.  For those with conditions like Lupus, uncontrolled disease can lead to a variety of symptoms including organ-damaging flares that are often life-threatening.  The Lupus Foundation of America has described AMPEL's LuGENE^®blood test as "poised to revolutionize care for Systemic Lupus Erythematosus".  AMPEL has Lupus collaborations with several spokes of ARPA-H including Providence Healthcare, Cleveland Clinic, Duke, Mayo Clinic, Wake Forest, UCSF, Mass General Brigham and MUSC.

Diversity across ancestries is a hallmark of inflammation and the AMPEL R&D team includes individuals from all ethnicities to ensure that AMPEL tests are predictive for all peoples living in the United States.  This is especially important as autoimmune diseases like Lupus emerge earlier and with greater severity in African-American, Asian, Native-American and Hispanic/Latinx communities shortening life-span.

"ARPA-H has an enormous opportunity and responsibility to improve the well-being of all Americans," said ARPA-H Director Renee Wegrzyn, Ph.D. "Through this nationwide hub-and-spoke network, ARPANET-H will enable ARPA-H to create breakthrough capabilities and achieve health outcomes for everyone that are accessible, tangible, and measurably better. Regardless of location, ARPA-H funding will support the best and brightest ideas across the country, with opportunities for universities, companies, and non-traditional performers."  

ARPA-H was funded last September with a budget of $2.5B through FY2025 and the name is a nod to DARPA's original ARPANET that fueled the development of breakthrough national security technologies.  Spokes are selected based on their ability to act with urgency in response to immediate health demands and deliver solutions nationwide.  ARPA-H's mission is to improve health outcomes in focus areas: health science futures, proactive health, scalable solutions and resilient systems.  The spoke network's activities are built on competitive and agile ideation, to be applied against any known health challenge. 

About AMPEL BioSolutions

AMPEL is a Precision Medicine company commercializing a development pipeline of blood tests that measure dynamic RNA gene expression providing a real-time CLIA-certified report of inflammation status including drugs targets that are abnormal including autoimmunity, oncology and infectious disease.  Unlike DNA tests which only need to be done once, AMPEL's RNA blood or biopsy tests are utilized on demand with the goal of "treat to target" and optimal disease management for Lupus (LuGENE^®) or Dermatology Conditions such as Psoriasis or Ezcema (DermaGENE^®).  For an otherwise healthy individual, AMPEL's prediction of inflammation with WellGENE^® may be an early indicator of changes in the immune system that may be worth investigating further by a trained healthcare provider.  In addition, AMPEL works with Pharma/Biotech customers for target identification, pre-clinical models, post-hoc analysis and real-time enrichment during clinical trial enrollment.  The company's portfolio of tests are supported by the AMPEL Genomic Platform of RNA analytic tools and explainable predictive AI.

SOURCE AMPEL BioSolutions