RxMP Therapeutics Inc, a late pre-clinical stage therapeutics company developing novel therapies for the rapid control of hemorrhage and excessive bleeding, announced on Tuesday that it has been awarded up to USD10.7m from the US Department of War (DoW) through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Resuscitation and Prevention of Ischemia-Induced Dysfunction (RAPIID) program.

This award is intended to support RxMP through several of the most significant remaining preclinical, manufacturing, and regulatory milestones required to advance its lead product candidate, RMP-402, toward first-in-human clinical development. The contract will fund completion of RMP-402, including remaining IND-enabling development activities, furthering manufacturing scale-up, and preparation of the Investigational New Drug (IND) application package.

RMP-402 is a first-in-class hemostatic biomimetic composed of manufactured allogeneic red cell membrane particles, analogs of active particles that circulate naturally in human blood. Administered intravenously, RMP-402 is designed to rapidly accelerate hemostasis at sites of active bleeding without increasing the risk of off-target clotting. The product is being developed to treat hemorrhage in dual use settings, both military and civilian, especially where access to conventional blood products may be limited by availability, storage requirements, logistics, or the urgency of treatment.

The award is part of DARPA's RAPIID program, which is focused on advancing shelf-stable blood analog technologies that can be manufactured at scale and rapidly progressed toward regulatory authorisation. The program seeks to establish the manufacturing, clinical, commercial, and regulatory pathways necessary to make advanced hemorrhage countermeasures available to war fighters and civilians when traditional blood products are unavailable.