NIH awards $20.6 million grant to establish Human Virome Characterization Center at UCLA

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $20.6 million grant over five years to establish one of five Human Virome Characterization Centers, or HVCCs, leveraging UCLA leadership and the collective expertise of interdisciplinary scientists nationwide to advance understanding of the virome’s role in human health and disease across the oral-gut-brain axis.

Yvonne Hernandez-Kapila, associate dean of research at the UCLA School of Dentistry, will serve as contact principal investigator, making this the largest NIH grant awarded to the school of dentistry in its 60-year history.

Among the four multiple primary investigators, or MPIs, is Clara Lajonchere, deputy director of UCLA’s Institute for Precision Health. The center’s discovery team will comprise specialists from UCLA, Baylor College of Medicine, the Mayo Clinic, UC San Diego, USC, Penn State and the NIH/National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, or NIDCR.

This initiative is part of the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program, or HVP, which seeks to identify the diversity of viruses that naturally inhabit the human body, often called the virome. Of the five HVCCs, the UCLA-led initiative is the only one headquartered in a dental school.

The healthy human virome

“This novel effort is an enormous undertaking, and it promises to change medicine,” Hernandez-Kapila said. “The HVP aims to characterize the ‘healthy’ human virome, remove technological roadblocks, and define the virome’s role in human health and disease.”

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Building on the achievements of the NIH Human Microbiome Project, or HMP — which transformed knowledge of the human bacteriome — the HVCC and three concurrent funded initiatives will address the largely uncharted human virome and its potential effects on health. Although estimates suggest that over 380 trillion viruses inhabit the human body, much remains unknown about what constitutes a “healthy” virome – viruses that infect bacteria, viruses that replicate in human cells, and viruses that pass through the body without replicating – especially across the lifespan.

“Investigating the collection of microbes that live in and on us profoundly changed our understanding of the role our bacteria/microbe partners play in keeping us healthy. The HMP also led to the discovery of new biomarkers for health and disease and gave us new approaches for developing therapeutics,” Hernandez-Kapila added. “We hope the Human Virome Program and our center on the oral-gut-brain axis will do the same for viruses.”

Oral, gut and brain systems

HVCC research will concentrate on the oral, gut and brain systems, where viral communities may play significant roles in immune regulation, neurodevelopment and disease processes. The center aims to characterize virome richness, diversity and structure in healthy individuals across different age groups and ethnic backgrounds. This will establish a baseline for identifying disease-associated virome alterations, potentially enhancing early detection, diagnosis and treatment.

Dean and Professor Paul Krebsbach praised the achievement, saying: “This NIH grant underscores the outstanding thought leadership at the UCLA School of Dentistry, particularly the groundbreaking human virome research already conducted by the Hernandez-Kapila Lab. Being selected as one of only four HVP hubs is a significant recognition of our institution’s expertise. With this grant, UCLA, our project partners and other sites are poised to drive transformative discoveries with boundless potential for societal impact.”

Five core functions of the HVCC

The HVCC will comprise five overlapping, interacting cores, each designed to support a specific aspect of research and operations:

1. Administrative: This central hub will coordinate between research teams, patient cohorts and other cores across the country, ensuring smooth operations and integrating efforts with the broader HVP initiative.
2. Biospecimen collection: This core will source high-quality biospecimens from both existing and prospective cohorts. It will leverage resources from diverse populations, including those at UCLA, Mayo Clinic, NIH/NIDCR and future cohorts like the All of Us program, to build a rich dataset of virome samples.
3. Biospecimen analysis: Using state-of-the-art sequencing technologies, this core will analyze biospecimens to profile the virome, uncovering new insights into virus types and interactions within the oral–gut–brain axis.
4. Data analysis and submission: This core will process complex datasets, applying advanced bioinformatics, data science, and machine learning techniques. The goal is to analyze viral diversity and community structures, assess their stability across time, and understand their clinical and physiological interactions.
5. Ethical, legal and social implications: To ensure ethical oversight and address social determinants of health, this core will conduct research and create guidelines for ethically handling participant data and biospecimens. This core’s research will examine social, ethical and legal aspects to foster inclusivity and transparency.

Timeline and resource sharing

Commencing in the first quarter of 2025, the initiative’s first year will focus on establishing essential infrastructure including dedicated staff, defining research protocols and data management, and activating an HVCC website for sharing updates. Monthly meetings between PIs and core leaders will be held throughout the life of the project to ensure constant and closed-loop communication.

At the one-year anniversary and every year thereafter, the HVCC will host a meeting for all team members to present summaries of their activities and discuss areas of collaboration, synergies and engagement with other HVP consortium members. In conjunction with the annual meeting in years three, four and five, a joint symposium hosted by HVCC member institutions will be organized to ensure effective communication and dissemination of findings and to highlight other expert speakers in the field.

During this discovery phase, $250,000 in funding will be set aside each year to support multiple Collaborative Pilot Projects, or CPPs, to capitalize on findings, validate new tools, methods and approaches, and characterize novel viruses.

Open access infrastructure

Aligning with NIH’s commitment to data sharing, the HVCC will establish an open access infrastructure for sharing findings and best practices in virome research with the scientific community and the public.

In addition to Hernandez-Kapila and Lajonchere, the MPIs include Joseph Petrosino, a founding member of HMP and a professor and chair at Baylor College of Medicine; James Cerhan, a cancer epidemiologist at the Mayo Clinic; and Janice Lee, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and deputy director for Intramural Clinical Research at NIH/NIDCR.

“The collaboration among members of this expert team will help unlock the mysteries of the human virome, revealing its profound impact on disease and health across diverse populations,” Lajonchere said. “Together, our shared expertise will drive breakthroughs that benefit all of humanity”.

Additional info on the MPIs and leadership teams in each of the HVCC’s five core functional areas is available in this downloadable PDF.