BREAKTHROUGHS | 9.30.2025

ARPA-H awards Grafton $42.5 million to solve early detection of Stage I cancer

Redwood City, CA and Peactree Corners, GA — September 2025 — Grafton Sciences (previously, Grafton Biosciences) has been awarded a $42.5 million contract from ARPA-H to develop an at-home early detection platform capable of detecting more than 48 tumors at Stage I, representing over 90% of the global cancer burden.

The project brings together advances in synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and manufacturing. It centers on non-invasive administration of reporter molecules that selectively interact with tumor microenvironments and release trace volatile signatures that can be exhaled and detected with a breath test.

All components — from molecular structures to the ultra-sensitive breath detection devices — are being advanced in parallel through Grafton’s autonomous discovery platform, which integrates computational modeling, automated experimentation, and materials engineering to coordinate design decisions across physical and biological domains.

“This project is a major milestone on our path to building physical superintelligence,” said Anubhav Dubey, Chief Executive Officer of Grafton Sciences and Principal Investigator on this ARPA-H project. “By connecting hypothesis generation, experimental execution, and real-world validation in one continuous loop across a highly general capability set, we can make Stage I early detection of cancer possible — and ultimately, make disease optional.”

This project is part of Grafton’s recently announced moonshot program to solve all disease, wherein early detection, therapeutic design, and biological modeling are co-developed across the full disease landscape to enable unprecedented solutions. This project exemplifies what is possible with a fundamentally different approach to science and engineering.