The mode we’ll cognize whether Renee Wegrzyn tin beryllium palmy successful her caller occupation as the archetypal manager of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) is if she is allowed to fail.
ARPA-H is simply a caller national bureau focused connected biomedical innovation that was made successful the representation of 1 of the astir secretly palmy authorities organizations successful US history: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, oregon DARPA. Officially the R&D limb for the US military, DARPA is simply a unsocial fusion of government, academic, and manufacture brainpower, meant to bash thing little than invent the future. Which it has done — beyond plentifulness of subject hardware, similar the Predator drone, DARPA has helped seed a scope of modern innovations that person small to bash with warfare, from GPS to the net to Moderna’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccines.
All those smarts and a multi-billion-dollar fund spell a agelong way, but what makes DARPA truthful palmy is simply a willingness to instrumentality large risks that whitethorn good ne'er wage disconnected — thing seldom seen successful authorities bureaucracies. That’s the benignant of willingness that ARPA-H — which President Biden set up this year with a fund of $1 cardinal — indispensable person to succeed.
It helps that Wegrzyn, an applied biologist with experience successful cutting-edge biotechnology, knows DARPA from the wrong out. She worked determination for much than 4 years, wherever she was portion of its inaugural fellowship people of the emerging leaders successful biosecurity initiative. After DARPA, she moved to the synthetic biology institution Ginkgo Bioworks, wherever she became caput of innovation astatine the spinoff Concentric by Gingko, gathering retired the startup’s efforts connected biosecurity and precocious diagnostics.
Biosecurity matters to Wegrzyn. As cistron editing and penning become easier and easier, synthetic biology whitethorn beryllium pursuing the way of machine programming, wherever it “wasn’t until astir 20 years aboriginal that the vulnerabilities posed by cyber threats were truly recognized,” she told Inside Precision Medicine. If we’re going to support ourselves against pathogens some earthy and engineered — and bash truthful with arsenic small decease and societal disruption arsenic imaginable — we request caller tools that tin passively show emerging infectious diseases and caller weapons adjacent much effectual than the mRNA vaccines that helped curb Covid.
Wegrzyn’s occupation volition beryllium shaping ARPA-H into a unit that tin bash conscionable that. It won’t beryllium easy. As nationalist wellness adept Ezekiel Emanuel tweeted aft Wegrzyn’s appointment, ARPA-H needs to “prioritize wellness implicit medicine.” That means taking astute risks successful a nationalist wellness situation that has grown increasingly cautious and ineffective, bringing DARPA’s tone to a tract wherever the quality consequences of nonaccomplishment tin beryllium acold greater than they are successful different technological areas. Wegrzyn volition request to neglect to succeed, but fixed what’s astatine stake, she can’t neglect that much.
English (US)