HHS creates its first Foundry for American Biotechnology

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services created the first Foundry for American Biotechnology to produce technological solutions to enhance medical care and respond to health security threats.

The Foundry will be located in Manchester, N.H., and managed by the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) and DEKA Research Corp., as part of a public-private partnership with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

“As the outbreak of the novel coronavirus reminds us, protecting the health and security of the American people requires constantly investing in biotechnology innovation and partnering with the private sector,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said. “The creation of the first Foundry for American Biotechnology in New Hampshire is a milestone achievement in the innovative work that ASPR has done to support America’s development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures. Every year, America faces natural disasters and other public health emergencies, and someday, Americans will be able to recover faster from these emergencies and stay healthier because of products that come out of this Foundry.”

The Foundry will include an idea lab, dry and wet labs, manufacturing space, and a learning zone with access to DEKA’s industrial design capabilities. It will also create a commercialization program that engages private-sector partners to accelerate the adoption of the technologies.

“The Foundry for American Biotechnology represents a game-changer in driving technologies critical to saving lives in disaster response,” ASPR’s’s Robert Kadlec said. “By providing essential services that move biotechnology from bench to bedside, the foundry not only solves problems the nation faces in health security but also boosts the U.S. bioeconomy.”

This will help technology more quickly becomes part of daily medical care and available for disaster response. Further, the commercialization program may reduce the need for federal and state governments to maintain stockpiles of medications, vaccines, diagnostics, equipment, and supplies.

For the first project, ASPR is partnering with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on developing small, portable, automated devices that could be transported easily to disaster locations to make necessary medicines on-site.

“The DARPA partnership with ASPR is poised to provide the initial demonstration of automated, on-demand capabilities for distributed production of medicines, an important enabling capability for both the military and civilian sectors,” Anne Fischer from DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office said. “We are excited to work with ASPR at the Foundry to validate these critical technologies for production of medicines.”