Magnendo, an MIT spinout developing magnetic robotic navigation technology for endovascular procedures, has been awarded up to $32 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop an autonomous system for treating ischemic strokes. The five-year program will focus on robotic technology designed to navigate blood vessels with less direct input from physicians, addressing limitations of mechanical thrombectomy, a standard treatment for severe ischemic strokes caused by large vessel occlusions. Although thrombectomy can restore blood flow by removing a clot, it requires highly specialized expertise and is available at a relatively small number of hospitals. Magnendo says its technology could help make advanced procedures more accessible. The technology uses magnetic robotic navigation to control and guide endovascular instruments, with preclinical testing demonstrating improvements in navigation speed and procedural consistency among physicians. The new funding will support development of a next-gen platform with the goal of enabling increasingly autonomous endovascular interventions. The program is part of ARPA-H’s AIR initiative, led by program manager Ileana Hancu, which aims to develop robotic systems for endovascular stroke procedures with progressively less direct human control. According to Hancu, hundreds of thousands of people experience large vessel occlusions each year but many do not receive thrombectomy due to distance from equipped hospitals. The program integrates magnetic robotics with medical imaging, AI and other technologies to create a unified platform capable of interpreting vascular anatomy.