Bexorg lands up to $28.3M ARPA-H grant to extend human brain perfusion
What's the deal? Bexorg, a New Haven-based precision neurology company, has been awarded up to $28.3 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The grant funds a three-phase, 36-month project to extend its BrainEx perfusion technology from 24 hours to up to two weeks.
What's the endgame? Bexorg tests therapies directly in ethically donated postmortem human brains, pairing the platform with its NeuroScale brain slice and NeuroLens AI systems. A longer perfusion window would let it run longitudinal studies of human brain pharmacology, including responses to repeated dosing and effects that emerge beyond 24 hours.
Why now? Many disease processes and drug effects unfold over days. "Many disease processes and therapeutic effects unfold over days and cannot be adequately studied within a 24-hour window," said chief scientific officer Bruce Car.
The project will validate sustained brain physiology for up to two weeks using automated perfusion, assess how drug responses align with known clinical outcomes, and evaluate combination therapies relevant to Alzheimer's disease and other CNS disorders. The resulting multi-omics datasets could be used to train and refine Bexorg's AI models.
What could go wrong? The work depends on donated human tissue, raising stewardship questions. "Every study begins with an extraordinary gift from a donor and their family, and that comes with a tremendous responsibility," said chief executive officer and co-founder Zvonimir Vrselja.
The signal: At $28.3 million, the award sits in the top 3% of health grants in the US by size. It reflects what Vrselja called "a larger shift in CNS drug discovery and development," toward testing human biology directly rather than relying on animal models before clinical trials.
Read more: finance.yahoo.com
Image credit: Bexorg
