Could Philadelphia play a role in a new federal agency for health-care innovation?

A new federal agency for health-care research is spelling out its criteria on Friday for selecting two regional “hubs” — offices in cities with the expertise to help move innovation into the hands of patients and their doctors.

Claire Marrazzo Greenwood thinks that sounds a lot like the Philadelphia region.

As a senior vice president of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, she is helping to coordinate a multipronged effort to secure a role for the region in the year-old agency, called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H).

One way would be for Philly or its suburbs to be selected as a site for one of the two regional hubs, she said. The agency is holding virtual information sessions on Friday for interested parties, expected to come from health-care centers across the country. Formal proposals must be submitted by April 7, with site selection to be announced in mid-September.

Another way for the Philly region to contribute is for its health-care and biotech leaders to propose problems for the new agency to solve, Greenwood said.

Modeled after DARPA, the research arm of the Pentagon, the agency is designed to be nimble, delivering practical solutions for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases on a much faster time frame than the National Institutes of Health, which funds research that can span decades.

The new agency is seeking project proposals throughout the coming year, so it makes sense for Philly to propose challenges for which it has the know-how to lead solutions, such as cell and gene therapy, she said.

“Our region has such a strong mix of the basic science and the translational science,” she said. “The opportunity there is to say: ‘Here are problems that the agency should tackle, that our region is uniquely suited to test solutions for.’ ”

The Philly region is home to several prominent research institutions, chief among them the University of Pennsylvania, a perennial chart-topper in NIH research funding. The area also is home to a mix of cutting-edge start-ups and pharmaceutical giants that employ more than 70,000 people, the chamber says.

With that combination, Philadelphia ranks eighth in the country for its size and concentration of talent in life sciences research, according to a 2022 analysis by CBER, a Dallas-based real estate and investment firm. (Boston was tops.)

The new health research agency will not conduct research itself. Instead, it will hire project managers to award contracts and oversee the results.

That represents yet another opportunity for Philadelphia, Greenwood said. In addition to proposing projects for the agency to tackle, members of the region’s health sciences community could apply to manage them.