Waterfall Scientific, a biotechnology company pioneering continuous-flow RNA manufacturing technologies, today announced that it has been selected by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to lead a six-company consortium under the Genetic Medicines and Individualized Manufacturing for Everyone (GIVE) program. The project, titled ESCALATOR, brings together a network of industry leaders in cell-free nucleic acid synthesis, LNP formulation, microfluidics, advanced analytics, and hardware and software engineering, supported by an award of up to $54.5 million.

ARPA-H supports high-impact, innovative efforts intended to accelerate breakthroughs in health and medicine. The GIVE program aims to transform the speed, scale, and accessibility of manufacturing for complex genetic medicines. Under Waterfall Scientific’s leadership as prime contractor, the consortium will integrate advanced technologies to establish an end-to-end, continuous-flow platform capable of rapid, on-demand production and characterization of high-purity messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines.

Driving Next-Generation Cell-Free Manufacturing

Traditional mRNA manufacturing relies on batch-based processes, creating production bottlenecks, high costs, and scalability challenges, which are particularly acute during public health emergencies or for personalized medicine deployment. The ESCALATOR platform seeks to overcome these barriers by developing a fully integrated microfluidic DNA synthesis, RNA transcription, purification, formulation and fill/finish system, coupled with an automated drug substance/product characterization system.

“Leading this landmark ARPA-H initiative alongside such exceptional consortium partners marks a pivotal milestone for Waterfall Scientific as we advance our innovative technology,” said Inna Shcherbakova, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Waterfall Scientific. “This award strongly endorses our continuous-flow paradigm. By uniting best-in-class capabilities across enzymatic DNA synthesis, formulation, microfluidics, automated hardware, and high-throughput analytics, we are establishing a scalable platform that will redefine how nucleic acid therapies are manufactured globally.”

“This investment provides a truly exciting opportunity to move our promising technologies from concept to meaningful impact,” said Melissa J. Moore, Ph.D., also a Waterfall Scientific Co-Founder. “We look forward to working with ARPA-H and our collaborators to deliver results for patients, providers, and communities.”

Best-in-Class Consortium Partners

The ESCALATOR consortium brings together specialized expertise across five key technical domain partners:

  • Ansa Biotechnologies: Providing rapid, high-fidelity enzymatic DNA synthesis to generate customized DNA templates for transcription.

  • Volta Labs: Deploying automated fluid handling and sample preparation technology to optimize and miniaturize DNA template production and characterization.

  • Polymorphic Biosciences: Contributing advanced lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation technologies.

  • Tensentric: Leading custom hardware design for mRNA production and fill-finish, supporting system integration, and commercial prototyping for the automated manufacturing platform.

  • Ginkgo Bioworks: Delivering system integration for manufacturing and characterization systems and computational optimization across the platform pipeline.

Transforming Global Health Security and Personalized Medicine

The resulting continuous-flow architecture will drastically reduce manufacturing footprints, lower unit costs, and shorten lead times for mRNA therapeutic production from weeks to days. Beyond emergency pandemic responses, the platform will enable decentralization of mRNA therapeutic production for targeted personalized oncology, rare disease therapeutics, and global health interventions.

About Waterfall Scientific

Waterfall Scientific is a Massachusetts-based biotechnology platform company developing continuous-flow technologies for mRNA manufacturing. Spun out of the University of Massachusetts Amherst with exclusively licensed technology developed in the laboratory of Prof. Craig T. Martin, Ph.D. (Waterfall Scientific CSO and Co-founder), Waterfall Scientific’s DuoTetherTM continuous-flow system dramatically improves the purity and efficiency of mRNA synthesis. Waterfall welcomes interest from investors in the biomanufacturing space. For more information, visit www.waterfallsci.com.

Media gallery

About The Author
Business Wire