First lady Dr. Jill Biden announced $110 million in awards from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to fund research and development in women’s health.
The awards, distributed across 23 teams, will focus on creating innovative solutions for a wide range of women’s health issues, including chronic pain, ovarian cancer, and endometriosis.
The Children’s Research Institute of Washington, DC, will receive $8.1 million to develop a new method for assessing chronic pain in women. Research shows that women experience pain differently from men, often leading to misdiagnosis or undertreatment. The institute’s project aims to create an objective measure of chronic pain by studying how a woman’s eyes respond to external stimulation, providing health care providers a more accurate way to assess and treat pain in women.
Aspira Women’s Health Inc., based in Shelton, Connecticut, has been awarded $10 million to create a non-invasive blood test to diagnose endometriosis. The condition affects approximately one in 10 women, but it can take years to diagnose, often requiring surgery. Aspira’s project seeks to dramatically reduce the time it takes to diagnose endometriosis, giving women faster access to treatment options.
In Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will receive $9.1 million to develop a non-invasive MRI technology aimed at improving the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders that disproportionately affect women, such as Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis. Officials said the goal is to advance knowledge of these diseases and improve the options available to women who suffer from them.
Gravidas Diagnostics, located in Los Angeles, will receive $3 million to create a low-cost at-home test to detect early signs of preeclampsia, a leading cause of maternal mortality. The test aims to help doctors and pregnant women identify preeclampsia sooner, reducing pregnancy-related complications and improving maternal health outcomes.
The University of Iowa has been awarded $10 million to develop personalized nanoparticle treatments that use a woman’s immune system to fight late-stage and metastatic ovarian cancer. The approach could provide new options for women diagnosed with this aggressive form of cancer, which is often detected only after it has spread, making treatment more difficult.
Additionally, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will receive $3 million to study why women are more susceptible to migraines than men. The project aims to develop new drugs that target the brain’s lymphatic system to reduce the severity and frequency of migraines in women.
The awards are part of ARPA-H’s Sprint for Women’s Health, which the first lady launched in February 2024. Over the past 10 months, ARPA-H has received over 1,700 submissions from 45 states and 34 countries, generating significant interest in advancing research on women’s health.
President Biden has also called on Congress to invest $12 billion in new funding for women’s health research and signed an Executive Order on Advancing Women’s Health Research and Innovation, directing federal agencies to act. The ARPA-H awardees are part of the federal government’s broader efforts to prioritize women’s health research, focusing on conditions that disproportionately affect women.
“It’s been less than 10 months since we launched the Sprint for Women’s Health, and today we’re seeing the results,” said Renee Wegrzyn, director of ARPA-H. “We’re sprinting towards changing the lives of millions of women who have been left behind in research for far too long. This is about more than just science — it’s about creating a new way of doing business in government to address women’s health.”
