The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), through its Health Science Futures Mission Office, has released a Sources Sought notice titled “Novel and Enhanced Modalities for Optic Nerve Imaging” (ARPA-H-SS-26-157). This request is being issued in support of ARPA-H’s Transplantation of Human Eye Allografts (THEA) program, an ambitious initiative focused on enabling whole eye transplantation to restore vision for blind and visually impaired patients.
While organ transplantation has advanced dramatically over the past several decades, eye transplantation remains out of reach due to a series of major technical barriers. Among the most significant is the inability to successfully repair, reconnect, and regenerate the optic nerve so that visual information can travel from the transplanted eye to the brain. Through this Sources Sought notice, ARPA-H is seeking information from industry and academia on novel and enhanced modalities for optic nerve imaging, with an emphasis on in vivo serial imaging.
Solicitation Overview and Technical Focus
ARPA-H’s THEA program is centered on overcoming the scientific and engineering challenges associated with whole eye transplantation. According to the Sources Sought notice, these challenges include maintaining donor eye viability, reattaching and regenerating the optic nerve, and reconnecting cranial nerves, blood vessels, and muscles while managing immune response.
The agency identifies optic nerve repair and regrowth as the largest technical hurdle. Current imaging approaches require either toxic tracers for MRI imaging or euthanasia followed by ex vivo tissue extraction and confocal microscopy in animal models. ARPA-H notes that there is currently no viable method to continuously track nerve regeneration from the eye to the brain in living subjects without combining multiple imaging modalities.
To address this gap, ARPA-H is requesting information on technologies capable of enabling serial, non-invasive optic nerve imaging with single axon resolution. The agency is particularly interested in solutions that could support both large animal studies and eventual human clinical translation.
The Sources Sought specifically requests information on several technical areas, including:
- Emerging single axon resolution imaging technologies that may support visualization of optic nerve regeneration
- Potential enhancement of existing MRI or PET technologies to achieve significantly higher resolution
- Development of clinically translatable imaging tracers with minimal toxicity
- Imaging approaches capable of visualizing the optic nerve, optic chiasm, optic tract, and early visual processing regions within a single image
- Technologies that could realistically support human clinical trials within two years
- Methods capable of distinguishing donor retinal ganglion cells from induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived retinal ganglion cells at the transection site
ARPA-H also highlights interest in modalities such as photoacoustic imaging and quantum diamond magnetic imaging, while encouraging respondents to propose additional novel approaches. An important consideration throughout the notice is portability, specifically whether imaging systems could be deployed directly to research facilities or hospitals conducting transplantation procedures.
Key Dates and Submission Details
The response deadline is June 10, 2026, by 5:00PM Eastern Time and submissions should be sent to [email protected].
Responses are limited to six pages and must address the current state of the art, existing research gaps, and anticipated near-term technical advancements for the proposed imaging modality. Where possible, respondents are encouraged to provide quantitative performance metrics and supporting literature references.
Why This Matters
THEA represents one of ARPA-H’s most ambitious regenerative medicine efforts to date. Success in whole eye transplantation would require advances not only in surgical transplantation techniques, but also in neuroscience, regenerative biology, imaging, biomaterials, and immune modulation. The ability to monitor optic nerve regeneration in real time could become foundational not only for transplantation, but also for broader applications in neuroregeneration and neurodegenerative disease research.
For organizations working in advanced imaging, neurotechnology, molecular imaging, quantum sensing, ophthalmology, or regenerative medicine, this Sources Sought offers early insight into a potentially transformative future ARPA-H program area and an opportunity to help shape the agency’s technical direction.
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