Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity for the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program: Consortium Organization and Data Collaboration Center (CODCC) for the Human Virome Project (HVP) (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Key Dates

• June 7, 2023 - Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity for the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program: Developing Novel and Innovative Tools to Interrogate and Annotate the Human Virome (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). See NOT-RM-23-014
• June 7, 2023 - Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity for the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program: Characterization of Functional Interactions Between Viruses and Human and Microbial Hosts (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). See NOT-RM-23-015 
• June 7, 2023 - Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity for the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program: Characterize the Human Virome in Longitudinal, Diverse Cohorts Across the Lifespan (U54 Clinical Trial Not Allowed). See NOT-RM-23-017

Office of Strategic Coordination (Common Fund)

The Office of Strategic Coordination (Common Fund) intends to publish a funding opportunity to support a Consortium Organization and Data Collaboration Center (CODCC) for the NIH Common Fund supported Human Virome Program (HVP).  More information on the HVP can be found at https://commonfund.nih.gov/humanvirome.

This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and develop their approaches. The funding opportunity is expected to be published in August 2023 with an expected application due date at least 60 days after publication. No foreign applications will be allowed.

The funding opportunity will use the cooperative agreement U24 mechanism for “Resource-Related Research Projects--Cooperative Agreements – Single Component (Clinical Trial Not Allowed).” Details of the planned funding opportunity are provided below.

The NIH Common Fund HVP’s overall goal is to establish a research consortium to extensively characterize the human virome and create tools, models, methods that will enable in-depth study of its variation in relation to host factors and its influence on health and disease. It is anticipated that exploration of the human virome will provide insights into the health effects of tri-kingdom interactions (host-microbiome-virome) occurring within the human body and inform future studies examining novel disease connections. For the purposes of the NIH Common Fund HVP, members of the virome are viruses that establish a population within the human body (i.e., not transient) either as latent, persistent, integrated, or lytic in in the human host itself or in any of the prokaryotic or eukaryotic members of the microbiome in the human host. Despite recent technological advances, significant challenges remain that have hindered progress, including detection sensitivity, contaminant removal, scalability, and sample adequacy.

The new funding opportunity will support the HVP CODCC to serve as an organizational hub to provide support for administrative activities, promotion of research protocols and tool development, and assist data and biospecimen collection and harmonization. The CODCC will create and maintain a program data portal that will be an interactive dashboard and repository with visualization and search capabilities. The data portal will also serve as the access point for the Human Virome Catalog, a key resource that will be generated by the CODCC from the samples and datasets generated by the HVP consortium, as well as other external datasets that might be available.

The HVP CODCC will work collaboratively with other components of the HVP consortium to develop and implement improved virome studies.

Funding for the HVP will come from the NIH Common Fund, which supports cross-cutting programs expected to have exceptionally high impact. All Common Fund initiatives invite investigators to develop bold, innovative, and high-risk approaches to address problems that may seem intractable or to seize new opportunities that offer the potential for rapid progress.

Funding Information (subject to availability of funds)

Funding Information

Public/State Controlled Institution of Higher Education
Private Institution of Higher Education
Nonprofit with 501(c)(3) IRS Status (Other than Institution of Higher Education)
Small Business
For-Profit Organization (Other than Small Business)
State Government
Indian/Native American Tribal Government (Federally Recognized)
County governments
Independent school districts
Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities
Indian/Native American Tribally Designated Organization (Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments)
U.S. Territory or Possession
Indian/Native American Tribal Government (Other than Federally Recognized)
Regional Organization

Applications are not being solicited at this time. 

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Emmanuel Mongodin, Ph.D.
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
HumanVirome@od.nih.gov