AcroCyte announces ARPA-H funding for technology that grows kidney organoids from patient cells

AcroCyte announces ARPA-H funding for technology that grows kidney organoids from patient cells

On July 23, AcroCyte Therapeutics announced that ARPA-H had funded its R3CE technology. The company uses a patient’s kidney cells to grow small, three-dimensional pieces of tissue called kidney organoid modules.

The company describes R3CE as a method for expanding rare human cells in three-dimensional culture. In its July 23 press release, AcroCyte states that kidney cells are obtained through a minimally invasive procedure, expanded in culture over several weeks, and used to grow organoid modules. The company is trying to make the process of turning a small cell sample into organoid material reproducible.

Building an organoid involves several engineering challenges. Two weeks ago, a USC team showed how WNT signaling determines the direction of nephron growth in a kidney organoid. AcroCyte’s project concerns a different stage: producing the cellular material from which tissue modules are subsequently grown.

AcroCyte also named its project partners: University of Chicago Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, and National Center for Biomodels. According to the press release, they will work in the United States and Taiwan. The ARPA-H funding supports R3CE, a technology intended to produce comparable batches of cells for growing organoids.

ARPA-H funds high-risk medical technologies and solutions that can be scaled. For AcroCyte, scaling begins with the reproducible expansion of rare cells. This step determines whether the same growth method can consistently produce comparable tissue modules.