34 Lives Awarded $44 Million Grant to Increase Donor Kidney Availability

Public benefit corporation 34 Lives, named for the approximate number of patients removed from the transplant waiting list each day due to death or sickness, will receive a $44 million grant from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to support its No Kidney Left Behind project.

No Kidney Left Behind is a five-year effort to ensure the viability of donated kidneys. The project aims to recover organ function in real-time, keeping more kidneys viable longer for transplantation. To accomplish this, hypothermic strategies are enhanced and then refined with a normothermic preservation method.

ARPA-H is a research funding agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services that supports biomedical and health breakthroughs to provide health solutions for all. One of its goals is to dramatically improve donor kidney availability.

“Recovering 50% of kidneys that might go unused would meaningfully increase supply and ultimately save many more lives,” said Jason Roos, PhD, ARPA-H scalable solutions mission office director. “Using new technology to enhance existing processes will help us scale to meet the needs of people on organ wait lists, regardless of where they live across the country.”