ARPA-H selected RNAV8 Bio for PROPEL, a one-year pilot program aimed at advancing programmable RNA medicines through a funding award of up to $4.4 million. The initiative will be led by the Rouskin Lab at Harvard Medical School and the Weissman Lab at MIT/Whitehead Institute, with RNAV8 focused on the therapeutic RNA format itself. PROPEL targets RNA’s intrinsic folding behavior, using untranslated regions (UTRs) as tunable control elements designed to regulate where and when protein output occurs. RNAV8 said it will screen protein outputs from mRNA pools, engineer UTRs, and validate results at the cargo level for applications such as cell-type-selective expression. The program is structured around bringing sequence-to-function predictability closer to regulatory-ready medicine formats. For the RNA field, ARPA-H’s involvement signals a continued push for design rules that translate beyond existing mRNA platforms and toward precise “logic-gated” expression control.