Terasaki Institute Wins Up to $19.8 Million ARPA-H Award to Bioprint Universal Liver Tissue

In a bid to confront one of modern medicine’s most persistent shortfalls, the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation has been awarded a contract worth up to $19.8 million under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) PRINT program. The funding will support a multi-institution initiative known as Prometheus, an ambitious effort to engineer transplantable, immune-compatible liver tissue that could one day free patients from the twin burdens of donor scarcity and lifelong immunosuppression. Dr. Xiling Shen, the institute’s Principal Investigator and Acting Director, will lead the project, which brings together bioengineers, stem cell biologists, transplant surgeons, and an industrial cell manufacturer in a coordinated push to make liver replacement scalable rather than scarce.

The scale of the unmet need is stark. In 2020, nearly 25,000 people were on the United States liver transplant waiting list, yet only about 38 percent of them received an organ. For many patients with end-stage liver disease, transplantation remains the only cure, and the shortage of donor organs means that thousands die or become too sick to qualify while waiting. Even those who do receive a transplant face a lifetime of immunosuppressive drugs, which carry risks of infection, cancer, and organ toxicity. Prometheus is designed to attack both problems at once: by creating a universal cell source that evades immune rejection and by manufacturing functional liver tissue on a scale that does not depend on deceased donors.

The project’s name is a deliberate nod to biology and mythology alike. Prometheus, the Greek Titan, was condemned to have his liver devoured daily, only for the organ to regenerate each night, a story long associated with the liver’s remarkable natural capacity for regeneration. The modern Prometheus project seeks to harness and extend that regenerative potential through engineering, building liver tissue in the laboratory that can engraft and function after transplantation.

At the technical core of the initiative is the creation of a universal, immune-compatible liver cell source derived from allogeneic hypoimmunogenic induced pluripotent stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, are adult cells reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like state, giving them the ability to differentiate into virtually any cell type in the body, including hepatocytes and the supporting vascular and stromal cells that a functioning liver tissue requires. By genetically engineering these cells to be hypoimmunogenic, meaning they are cloaked against the immune recognition mechanisms that normally trigger rejection, the team aims to produce cells that can be transplanted across patients without tissue matching and without the dangerous long-term immunosuppression that conventional transplantation demands.

Turning those cells into transplantable tissue requires more than biology; it demands engineering at scale. The Prometheus strategy combines cost-effective, scalable bioreactor culture methods with porous bed bioprinting, an additive manufacturing approach in which living cells and biomaterials are printed into three-dimensional architectures with interconnected porosity. That porosity is critical, because engineered tissue thicker than a few hundred microns cannot survive on diffusion alone. A printed liver construct must contain vascular-like channels that allow oxygen and nutrients to reach every cell and metabolic waste to be removed, both in the bioreactor during manufacturing and after implantation in the recipient’s body.

Dr. Shen framed the award as a convergence of disciplines that have too often worked in isolation. “This award allows us to bring together bioengineering, stem cell biology, and transplant medicine to build a liver that doesn’t require a donor match,” he said. “It’s a step toward making organ replacement scalable rather than scarce.” Within the Terasaki Institute itself, a dedicated faculty team will divide the technical challenges. Dr. Johnson V. John, Assistant Professor, is developing 3D-printing methods to build the structural and vascular components needed to support the tissue after transplantation. Dr. Vadim Jucaud, Assistant Professor, is working to establish perfusion through that architecture so the printed tissue can receive oxygen and nutrients throughout its volume. Dr. Menekse Ermis Sen, Terasaki Fellow, is developing the cell-manufacturing methods used to grow and scale the tissue’s biological components, a task that involves producing billions of functional cells under controlled, quality-assured conditions.

The collaboration extends well beyond a single institute. Co-investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine, The Pennsylvania State University, Washington University in St. Louis, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, and Rice University contribute expertise spanning stem cell differentiation, immunology, and tissue engineering. “PROMETHEUS connects discoveries across traditionally separate fields into a unified approach to liver replacement,” said Dr. Shuibing Chen of Weill Cornell Medicine. “This collaboration gives us an opportunity to turn bold scientific ideas into solutions that could meaningfully change the lives of patients.” At Penn State, Dr. Xiaojun Lance Lian highlighted one of the field’s central obstacles: “A major challenge in developing off-the-shelf engineered tissues is creating a cell source that can evade immune rejection across different patients,” he said. The hypoimmunogenic iPSC platform at the heart of Prometheus is a direct answer to that challenge.

Industrial partnership plays a decisive role in translating laboratory science into manufacturable medicine. Pluristyx is supplying the induced pluripotent stem cell lines that serve as Prometheus’s starting cell source. “We are thrilled to support the Terasaki Institute and colleagues as they address the critical shortage of transplantable livers via this ARPA-H program,” said Dr. Benjamin Fryer, CEO of Pluristyx. He explained that the company’s iPSCs are purposefully supplied in a genetically engineered, pre-expanded, and quality-controlled form, and are available in an immune-cloaked format to enable the massive scale of manufacturing required to build replacement liver tissue. By incorporating the company’s patient-centric safety switch, FailSafe, the engineered liver tissues could, in principle, provide a safe, durable, and universal replacement without the need for tissue matching or dangerous long-term immunosuppression. Such built-in safety mechanisms are widely regarded as essential for any clinical product derived from pluripotent stem cells, since they offer a way to eliminate cells that proliferate abnormally after transplantation.

Even a perfectly engineered tissue must prove itself in the body, and that responsibility falls to the transplant immunology team at UCLA. “Engineering a liver is only the beginning; proving that it works after transplantation is the decisive challenge,” said Jerzy W. Kupiec-Weglinski, M.D., Ph.D., Terasaki Professor of Surgery at UCLA. “At UCLA, we will transplant bioprinted liver tissues into laboratory models and evaluate their engraftment, function, and regenerative capacity, helping transform the promise of bioprinting into a practical solution for organ failure and donor organ scarcity.” Engraftment, the process by which transplanted tissue integrates with the host’s vasculature and begins performing hepatic functions such as protein synthesis, detoxification, and bile production, is the benchmark against which every engineered liver construct must ultimately be judged.

If successful, Prometheus could establish a scalable, donor-independent path to liver replacement, easing a shortage that today leaves thousands of patients without options and reducing the lifelong burden of immunosuppression for those who do receive transplants. The project also carries a symbolic resonance for the institute that leads it. It builds upon the legacy of TIBI founder Dr. Paul I. Terasaki, whose pioneering development of donor-recipient compatibility testing transformed organ transplantation and whose work continues to guide the institute’s research. Where that earlier revolution made transplants safer by matching donors to recipients, the new effort aims to make matching unnecessary altogether. The research is funded, in part, by ARPA-H, and the views expressed by the investigators are their own, not official positions of the U.S. Government. For a field that has long promised engineered organs and struggled to deliver them, the Prometheus project represents one of the most comprehensively resourced attempts yet to move bioprinted liver tissue from the laboratory bench toward the clinic.

Subject of Research: Bioprinting of immune-compatible, transplantable liver tissue from induced pluripotent stem cells

Article Title: Terasaki Institute secures up to $19.8 million ARPA-H PRINT award for Prometheus liver bioprinting project

Article References: Terasaki Institute secures up to $19.8 million ARPA-H PRINT award for Prometheus liver bioprinting project. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

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Keywords: liver bioprinting, ARPA-H, PRINT program, Terasaki Institute, induced pluripotent stem cells, hypoimmunogenic cells, organ transplantation, immunosuppression, bioreactor culture, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, organ shortage