What you should know
Fixing the data layer first
While microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) have been detected in human lungs, arterial plaques, and brains, the medical community currently lacks accurate, standardized tools to measure the load or fully understand the biological damage of specific types of plastic.
Before ARPA-H can fund the elimination of these plastics, it has to solve the fundamental data problem. Currently, microplastic measurement techniques produce wildly inconsistent results from lab to lab.
Phase One of STOMP It is entirely focused on measurement and mechanism. The goal is to develop clinical reference tests that can accurately quantify a patient’s microplastic load at scale. Crucially, ARPA-H is bringing in the CDC as an independent validator to ensure that the new methods are universally reliable.
This phase will also produce a “risk stratification mechanism.” Not all plastics are the same; some polymers can pass through the body harmlessly, while others can cross cellular barriers and trigger serious inflammation. By ranking plastics based on their biological harm, STOMP will finally give the biotech industry a priority list.
“Microplastics are in every organ we see, in ourselves and in our children. But we don’t know which ones are harmful or how to eliminate them,” he said. Alicia Jackson, Ph.D., director of ARPA-H. “No one wants unknown particles accumulating in their body. The field works in the dark. STOMP turns on the lights.”
Phase two (elimination)
Using data from Phase One, researchers will draw on pharmaceutical biology and bioremediation science to design interventions that safely and effectively remove microplastics accumulated in human organs.
The agency explicitly states that these disposal approaches will be based on “pharmaceutical biology and bioremediation science, in reverse.” This is an astonishing technological leap. Bioremediation is typically used to clean up oil spills or contaminated soils using microorganisms. Adapting those principles to safely bind, neutralize, or extract synthetic nanoplastics from living human brain or lung tissue represents a true medical breakthrough.
ARPA-H Program Director Shannon Greene, Ph.D.noted: “It is physically impossible for us to completely divorce our lives from plastics. They are in everything we touch: our clothes, the materials from which we get our food and water. We need to understand how microplastics are distributed throughout the body and what harm they cause before we can take the next step to eliminate them and improve human health.”
