The most striking chapter of New Hampshire's modern industrial story is unfolding in the same Manchester millyard that once housed the Amoskeag mills. The Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) is a nonprofit, Department of Defense–sponsored institute working to make large-scale manufacturing of engineered tissues and, eventually, organs practical — and to build the skilled workforce that such manufacturing would require. It is based at the Technology Center at 400 Commercial Street in Manchester.
ARMI's principal program, BioFabUSA, is a public-private partnership of more than 170 member organizations from industry, academia, government, and nonprofits, focused on developing the standards, tools, and workforce to move tissue- and cell-based innovations from the lab to commercial-scale manufacturing. It was launched as a Manufacturing USA innovation institute in July 2017, following a Department of Defense award announced in 2016 with an initial federal commitment reported at $80 million. The effort is closely associated with inventor Dean Kamen of DEKA Research & Development, whose headquarters sits in the same millyard.
The symbolism is hard to miss: a region that helped lead the textile age is now trying to help lead an age of biofabrication and advanced manufacturing. 603Local will keep this section tied to official ARMI/BioFabUSA sources and avoid overstating progress beyond what those sources support.