Human Immunology Project Consortium (U19) | RFA AI 15 041

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA AI 15 041

The Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) U19 opportunity (RFA-AI-15-041) is an NIH cooperative agreement designed to build and support a coordinated network of research teams focused on detailed, high-resolution profiling of human immune responses in infectious diseases, including HIV. The central idea is to take advantage of modern immune profiling and systems biology technologies to understand what the human immune system is doing after vaccination, exposure to adjuvants, or natural infection, and to do so in a way that allows comparisons across studies and populations. Rather than looking at a single immune readout in isolation, the program emphasizes integrated, high-throughput measurements paired with careful clinical characterization of participants so that immune signals can be interpreted in the context of real-world outcomes.

Projects funded through this FOA are expected to study well-characterized human cohorts and generate rich datasets that capture both the diversity and the shared patterns of immune responses across different conditions. A major long-term goal is the discovery of molecular signatures, sometimes described as immune fingerprints or profiles, that reliably correlate with outcomes of interest such as vaccine responsiveness, protection, disease severity, or other clinically meaningful endpoints. These signatures could help explain why some people respond strongly to a vaccine while others do not, identify pathways that predict protective immunity, and guide the rational design or selection of vaccines and adjuvants.

A defining feature of the HIPC program is its emphasis on data sharing and the rapid dissemination of results to accelerate the broader field. Awardees are expected to make HIPC-supported data and findings publicly accessible through established immunology data resources such as ImmPort and ImmuneSpace. The FOA also encourages the development of improved approaches for data integration, analysis, visualization, and presentation, recognizing that large-scale immune profiling produces complex datasets that require robust computational methods to translate raw measurements into usable biological and clinical insights. In practice, this makes the program as much about building community resources and analytical capabilities as it is about generating individual study results.

While the immediate focus is infectious disease immunology, the program is framed as a foundation for wider applications. The knowledge and tools developed to classify and predict immune responses in infection and vaccination are expected to carry over into other immune-mediated conditions, including allergy, asthma, transplant rejection, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory syndromes. In other words, understanding human immune response patterns at scale in one domain is meant to strengthen immunology across multiple clinical areas.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary NIH funding opportunity using the cooperative agreement mechanism, meaning NIH is expected to have substantial programmatic involvement compared with a standard research project grant. The activity category is health, and the CFDA numbers listed are 93.855 and 93.856. The original closing date was March 17, 2016, and the award ceiling listed is $1,500,000. The FOA anticipated multiple awards (the expected awards field is present but not quantified in the provided text).

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizational types, including state, county, city, township, and special district governments; federally recognized tribal governments and certain other tribal organizations; public and private institutions of higher education; independent school districts; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status; for-profit organizations (other than small businesses) and small businesses; and other domestic entities. The announcement also explicitly notes additional eligible applicant categories such as HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian serving institutions, AANAPISI institutions, faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. Foreign institutions and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply, though foreign components as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed, which generally means limited, well-justified international involvement can be included under specific NIH rules even when the primary applicant organization must be domestic.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Human Immunology Project Consortium (U19)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.855, 93.856.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2015-11-19.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-03-17. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for RFA AI 15 041

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: