Pilot Projects to Enhance the Human Virome Program (R03, Clinical Trials Not Allowed)

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.