The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is seeking applications for its Pilot Projects to Enhance the Human Virome Program.
Donor Name: National Institutes of Health (NIH)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 11/24/2025
Size of the Grant: $10,000 to $100,000
Grant Duration: 2 Years
Details:
The Common Fund Human Virome Program (HVP) aims to extensively and comprehensively characterize the human virome and create tools, models, and methods that will enable an in-depth study of its variation and composition in relation to host factors and its influence on health and disease.
The purpose of this NOFO is to support small pilot projects that extend the goals of the HVP, including further validating, improving, and complementing existing and newly developed tools from the HVP program by leveraging human specimens collected from the cohorts under the program; samples from animals to promote the refinement, utilization, and translation of these tools to better serve the goals of the HVP program; expanding existing cohorts and/or biospecimen sampling sites for virome characterization; developing tools and methods to study the human virome; and defining interactions between the human virome and host. These pilot projects will encourage collaboration across the HVP and expand the consortium. Pilot projects should not overlap with existing HVP efforts. The R03 is intended to support small research projects that can be carried out in a short period of time with limited resources.
The overall goal of the Human Virome Program (HVP) is to characterize the human virome, including eukaryotic and prokaryotic viruses and viral particles. The HVP will also create tools, models, and methods that will enable in-depth study of the virome’s breadth and variation, its association with host factors and its influence on human health. It is anticipated that exploration of the human virome will provide insights into the health effects of inter-kingdom interactions (host-virome and microbiome-virome) occurring within the human body and inform future studies examining novel connections with human health. The HVP consists of four initiatives that work synergistically to achieve the goals of the program. These initiatives are:
- Characterizing the human virome and its dynamics by utilizing longitudinal, demographically diverse (i.e., age, sex, race, ethnicity, etc.) human cohorts.
- Facilitating the discovery and annotation of viruses by developing tools, models, and methods that will improve detection, sensitivity, purification, and scalability.
- Studying interactions between the virome and the human host, as well as with other components of the human microbiome.
- Creating a Consortium Organization and Data Collaboration Center (CODCC) that will serve as an organizational and cooperation hub for the HVP Consortium and external groups and through the creation of a human virome catalog and data portal.
Objectives and Scope
Advances in metagenomic sequencing and bioinformatic innovations provide an unprecedented opportunity to characterize the human virome and its host dynamics across- and impact on- heterogeneous human cohorts and tissue types.
The objective of this funding opportunity is to expand, complement, or improve existing tools and models and those developed from the HVP through pilot projects that harmonize with the goals of the HVP, such as:
- Projects proposing the use of biospecimens should strive to have cohorts with an absence of overt disease (consider physiological and mental well-being). The cohorts, sampling sites, and biospecimens will be assessed programmatically to prevent over-representation of certain conditions and to ensure that participants are aligned with the average health of the U.S. population.
- Projects addressing the technological and methodological challenges currently hindering robust interrogation of the constituents and functionality of the human virome should focus on 1) complementing the development of existing innovative and novel tools, models, and methods which overcome the major challenges in identifying and characterizing human viruses, including computational biology and bioinformatics tools to enhance the analysis and visualization of the human virome. Projects cannot overlap with existing HVP efforts and should not focus on specific disease states.
- Projects focused on characterizing the functional interactions between the virome, microbiota (bacteria, archea, fungi), and human host may propose a range of studies, including (but not limited to) virome/virus basic biology, virus-bacteria, virus-fungi and virus-host interactions; detailed studies of single or multiple virome members; comparative virome investigations; and/or studies of viromes from multiple sites of the body. All prokaryotic and eukaryotic viruses are of interest; however, studies must involve the human host and clearly lead to a better understanding of the human host/virome symbiosis and inter-kingdom relationships.
Funding Information
- The NIH Common Fund intends to commit approximately $2M in FY2026.
- Direct costs are limited to a maximum of $100,000 per year and will be two-year funded.
Project Period
The maximum project period is 2 years.
Eligibility Criteria
Higher Education Institutions – Includes all types
- Public/State Controlled Institutions of Higher Education
- Private Institutions of Higher Education
Nonprofits Other Than Institutions of Higher Education
- Nonprofits with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
- Nonprofits without 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institutions of Higher Education)
For-Profit Organizations
- Small Businesses
- For-Profit Organizations (Other than Small Businesses)
Local Governments
- State Governments
- County Governments
- City or Township Governments
- Special District Governments
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Federally Recognized)
- Indian/Native American Tribal Governments (Other than Federally Recognized).
Federal Governments
- Eligible Agencies of the Federal Government
- U.S. Territory or Possession
Other
- Independent School Districts
- Public Housing Authorities/Indian Housing Authorities
- Native American Tribal Organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
- Faith-based or Community-based Organizations
- Regional Organization
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
