Beyond Pills and Shots

Winter 2025
By Silvia Cernea Clark

Rice is part of a multiuniversity research team awarded up to $34.9 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health to accelerate the development of a bioelectronic implant to improve obesity and Type 2 diabetes treatment. The technology promises to improve patients’ lives by simplifying treatment logistics and optimizing outcomes while reducing costs.

Rice Biotech Launch Pad will lead the commercialization effort for Rx On-site Generation Using Electronics — a self-contained, durable implantable device that houses cells engineered to produce T2D and obesity therapies in response to patients’ physiological needs.

“ROGUE’s innovative design combines efficient biological manufacturing, long-term durability and patient-friendly features that have the potential to transform the landscape of biologics delivery,” says bioengineer Omid Veiseh, faculty director of the Rice Biotech Launch Pad. “With the Rice Biotech Launch Pad leading the clinical translation and commercialization efforts, this funding will allow us to expedite the development and clinical trials of this groundbreaking technology, making it accessible to patients sooner.”

The technology promises to improve patients’ lives by simplifying treatment logistics and optimizing outcomes while reducing costs. 

Paul Wotton, in-house entrepreneur and executive director of the Rice accelerator, will be involved in every step of the process to ensure the evolution of this technology from research to clinical translation to an independent company.

“With the Biotech Launch Pad, our goal is venture creation in parallel to the groundbreaking research at Rice and its collaborating institutions,” Wotton says.

Carnegie Mellon University leads the team of researchers driving the accelerated development and testing of ROGUE. With a target cost of goods below $1,000 for at least one year of therapy, ROGUE aims to significantly lower the costs of biologics-based treatments.

This effort is funded under ARPA-H’s REACT program and includes funding for a first-in-human clinical trial for patients facing obesity and T2D. The trial preparation is slated to begin in the fifth year of the six-year project.

Other Rice co-principal investigators include bioengineer Jacob Robinson, who leads integration efforts for the project in line with the focus on clinical translation and commercialization, and bioengineer Oleg Igoshin, who oversees pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics modeling.

The multiple institutions collaborating on ROGUE include Rice; Carnegie Mellon; Northwestern University; Boston University; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of California, Berkeley; the Mayo Clinic; and New York City-based Bruder Consulting and Venture Group.

Omid Veiseh is professor of bioengineering at Rice and faculty director of the Rice Biotech Launch Pad. Jacob Robinson is professor of electrical and computer engineering and of bioengineering at Rice. Oleg Igoshin is professor of bioengineering and of chemistry and associate chair of the bioengineering department. Veiseh, Robinson and Igoshin are all affiliated with the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing.