Decode Health Awarded $1.9 Million NIH Grant to Accelerate AI-Powered Insight for Multiple Sclerosis
Two-year Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award strengthens the company’s mission to transform complex biomedical data into real-world solutions; the project will develop a blood-based, AI-driven readout of MS disease biology with Broad Clinical Labs, the Accelerated Cure Project for MS, and a broad network of industry and academic collaborators.
Nashville, TN | August 6, 2025 – Decode Health, a precision medicine analytics company powered by AI, has secured a competitive $1.9 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The new funding advances Decode Health’s core mission: to remove the technical and economic barriers that slow the translation of multiomics, clinical, and social determinants data into actionable insights. In multiple sclerosis (MS), where diagnostic criteria are shifting from rigid subtype labels to a dynamic, biology-driven view of underlying disease activity, Decode Health will apply its cloud-native analytics engine to RNA drawn from a single tube of blood. The result will be an objective, scalable readout of disease state and progression that remains relevant as clinical definitions evolve.
Securing a multi-year, non-dilutive award of this size is especially significant in today’s tight funding environment, where fewer federal and private dollars are available for early-stage health-tech programs. The award demonstrates how ongoing collaboration among industry, academia, and nonprofit organizations can help sustain high-impact innovation.
“This project is the culmination of over a decade of collaboration across our platform ecosystem,” said Chase Spurlock, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Decode Health and principal investigator on the grant. “Our team’s deep expertise in autoimmune disease, and MS in particular, uniquely positions us to execute. The NIH investment allows us to apply our AI engine to hundreds of patient samples and move quickly toward clinical and commercial deployment with the help of world-class partners.”
How the Grant Powers Progress
- Validate multiomics biomarker signatures that capture clinically meaningful MS activity and progression, using hundreds of new blood samples categorized by traditional subtyping but analyzed through a biology-first lens.
- Develop, benchmark, and refine machine learning classifiers on the Decode Health platform by integrating transcriptomics, genotyping, and additional omics layers to create a comprehensive disease profile.
- Generate regulatory-ready clinical narratives for each signature using large language model tools that align with CHAI standards and emerging FDA, CAP, and CLIA guidance.
- Publish de-identified data and methods through open-science channels so that the broader MS community can build on the work.
Collaboration at the Core: A Few Highlights
- Accelerated Cure Project for MS will engage the patient community, provide biosamples, and champion open data sharing.
- Broad Clinical Labs will provide high-throughput sequencing and multiomics laboratory expertise.
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and other leading academic centers will contribute clinical and bioinformatics insights and recruit participants as needed.
Additional industry and academic partners across the MS ecosystem will support sample collection, analysis, and commercialization.
Partner Perspectives
“The Accelerated Cure Project for MS is committed to research that reflects the real-world MS experience,” said Stephanie Buxhoeveden, PhD, MSN, FNP-BC, MSCN, Chief Scientific Officer at ACP. “Working with Decode Health allows our community’s biosamples and perspectives to shape an innovative approach that could improve care and speed new therapies.”
“Broad Clinical Labs is excited to support Decode Health with high-quality sequencing and data generation,” added Tim De Smet, Chief Commercial Officer at Broad Clinical Labs. “Together we aim to turn cutting-edge science into practical solutions that improve how MS is studied and treated.”
“As Director of Vanderbilt’s MS Clinic, I see every day how important it is to understand a patient’s disease trajectory early,” said Ram Sriram, MD, Director of the MS Clinic at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “A reliable blood-based approach could transform how we counsel patients and choose therapies.”
Yan Guo, PhD, Professor of Public Health Sciences and Director of the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, noted, “This collaboration brings together deep clinical expertise and advanced analytics; the result could set a new standard for integrating multiomics data into practical healthcare tools.”
Roadmap to Commercial Impact
Decode Health and its partners will launch expanded sample acquisition and iterative model refinement within the next quarter. At the same time, the company is working with diagnostic firms and biopharma sponsors whose upcoming clinical trials and therapeutic pipelines need quick, biology-based MS readouts. Following analytical and clinical validation, Decode Health will prepare for clinical readiness and engage with agencies on the appropriate regulatory pathways, while rolling out a commercialization plan that includes research use only kits, laboratory developed tests, and software-as-a-medical-device modules for trial stratification and treatment selection.
About Decode Health
Decode Health delivers an AI platform-as-a-service that accelerates precision medicine R&D for pharma, diagnostic, medtech, and health system innovators. The platform weaves together multiomics, clinical data, social drivers of health, and other healthcare information to de-risk research and deliver actionable insights quickly.
Media contact: media@decodehealth.ai • 855-899-9551
