Are the feds looking to shut down ARPA-H research hub in Cambridge?

“This decision puts real medical breakthroughs at risk,” Trahan said in an interview. “It undermines the work that is already delivering results. … Pulling the plug midstream, one: wastes taxpayer dollars and, two: it slows down innovation.”

In ARPA-H’s first year, the agency directed nearly $300 million in research funds to companies and nonprofits in Massachusetts. Having one of ARPA-H’s three offices here certainly helped, but as a global biomedicine epicenter, Greater Boston would have received significant funds regardless, and the Cambridge hub directed money to research around the country.

In a Jan. 30 letter, ARPA-H agreements officer Steven Piggott notified organizers behind the Greater Boston hub that the federal government intends to terminate the contract for the center, “in large part or in full.” The letter indicated that ARPA-H wants one of the projects being run out of the Hub, known as “Sprint for Women’s Health,” to continue.

Late Thursday, an official with ARPA-H pushed back at the description that the office is being shut down, calling it false and saying the agency is evaluating its hub vendors, not closing any of its three hubs. (The vendor for the Massachusetts hub is VentureWell, a nonprofit government contractor.)

Trahan’s office is leading an effort to gather signatures from members of the congressional delegation for a letter directed to President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking for an explanation for the effort to wind down the hub. The office also heard that an ARPA-H hub in Dallas, focused on customer experiences, faces a similar fate.

The delegation planned to send the letter to Trump and Kennedy, along with top officials at the National Institutes of Health and ARPA-H, on Friday morning.

The letter notes with some frustration that the lawmakers supported $1.5 billion in funding for ARPA-H included in a fiscal 2026 appropriations bill signed by Trump on Tuesday. The letter adds that Congress has directed ARPA-H to have offices in not less than three geographic areas; the third ARPA-H office, the agency headquarters, is in Washington. The Investor Catalyst Hub in Massachusetts is intended to focus on how best to commercialize the technologies that are being researched, ensuring they move from the lab to the marketplace.

The lawmakers, in their letter, say terminating the Investor Catalyst Hub’s work “would be a profound mistake and a blatant waste of taxpayer dollars” especially because the hub has produced tangible returns in its first two years. They demand a congressional briefing and detailed contingency plan for how ARPA-H will ensure the continuity of the work by Feb. 13.

“Once again, the [Trump] admin is pulling the rug out from under researchers,” US Representative Jake Auchincloss said in a statement. “If they want to make changes, fine — it’s still an evolving program. But make them productively, not destructively. Science is hard enough and the admin is making it harder.”

After it became clear that ARPA-H would be split into three offices, Governor Maura Healey’s administration worked with Mass General Brigham and several of the state’s business groups to make the case in 2023 that the Investor Catalyst Hub should come here. After securing that victory, Healey cited it as one of the major business wins under her watch.

Supporters of bringing the hub here argued at the time that it’s important for ARPA-H to be in the most renowned metro area in the country for biomedical research, in part to help ensure the agency has top-flight talent to pick from when choosing project managers — a temporary, rotational type of job but one that’s crucial to sparking these research projects.

The shakeup at ARPA-H comes at a rocky time for Greater Boston’s vaunted life sciences ecosystem as university and hospital researchers worry about cutbacks in federal funds. They did claim a big victory this week by landing language in the most recent spending package meant to ensure federal reimbursements for research overhead, known as “indirect costs,” don’t get cut.

Now comes a new potential threat as the local life sciences sector learns about the changes to the ARPA-H hub.

“Massachusetts was chosen for the Investor Catalyst Hub, because we have the strongest life science ecosystem in the world,” Trahan said in the interview. “The collaboration between researchers, entrepreneurs and hospitals was exactly what ARPA-H was designed to leverage. Weakening that infrastructure [weakens] the country’s ability to lead in innovation. This decision puts that entire pipeline at risk.”

Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.