Treating life-threatening bloodstream infections in combat situations is challenging, especially when the pathogen responsible is unknown. So, DARPA has called on Harvard’s Wyss Institute to use its groundbreaking biotech to fight this deadly threat. We've previously reported on the use of ‘cellular backpacks’ placed on immune cells to help them and heal .
Now, the researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering responsible for the tech have been contracted by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to address a pressing threat to civilian and military populations. The contract, worth up to US$12 million, is for DARPA’s new Synthetic Hemo-technologIEs to Locate and Disinfect (SHIELD) program, which aims to transform how the military manages and treats bloodstream infections, particularly in combat scenarios. “We are thankful to DARPA for launching this program and selecting us to develop a novel class of therapeutics to defend against a broad range of pathogens,” said Wyss Institute core faculty member Samir Mitragorti, the DARPA-SHIELD project’s Principal Investigator.
“Our goal is to develop a pathogen-agnostic treatment for defending human health in situations when the pathogen identity is unknown, or there is insufficient time to identify the pathogen. Mitragorti developed the micrometer-sized ‘backpacks’ engineered to bind to the surface of specific immune cells, including pathogen-eating macrop.