Human Tissue Models for Infectious Diseases (U19) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Human Tissue Models for Infectious Diseases (U19) funding opportunity (RFA-AI-16-022) is a National Institutes of Health program under HHS (specifically NIH, with the activity rooted in infectious disease research). It is designed to support the creation of a small number of multidisciplinary research Centers that can build and validate advanced in vitro human tissue models to study infectious diseases. The central aim is to push beyond traditional lab systems by developing human-relevant tissue platforms that better reproduce how infections actually unfold in the body, with the expectation that these models will strengthen both basic discovery science and translational work that can inform real-world countermeasures.

This FOA uses the cooperative agreement mechanism (U19), which typically means the funded projects are not just standard investigator-initiated grants but involve substantial scientific and/or programmatic involvement from the NIH. In practice, that usually translates into closer coordination with the funding agency, shared milestones or goals, and an emphasis on producing resources, data, or capabilities that are broadly useful to the infectious disease research community. The “Center” structure also signals that applicants are expected to bring together multiple disciplines and capabilities, for example tissue engineering, cell biology, immunology, microbiology/virology, bioengineering, imaging, computational analysis, and translational expertise, all integrated around building functional tissue models that can be used to study pathogen-host interactions.

The scientific focus is specifically on innovative in vitro human tissue models. These are laboratory-built systems intended to mimic key features of human tissues (such as epithelial barriers, vascular interfaces, immune components, or organ-specific microenvironments) that are important for infection biology. The models supported under this program are meant to serve infectious disease research needs, which commonly include understanding entry and spread of pathogens, host immune responses, tissue damage mechanisms, persistence or latency, and the ways pathogens exploit human tissue architecture. Because the FOA emphasizes both basic and translational research, the intended end uses are broad: generating fundamental mechanistic insights while also enabling more predictive testing of therapeutics, vaccines, or other interventions in a controlled human-relevant setting.

In terms of who can apply, eligibility is wide and includes many types of organizations: public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private universities, nonprofit organizations (with or without 501(c)(3) status), for-profit organizations (including those other than small businesses), small businesses, and multiple levels of government entities (state, county, city/township, special districts), as well as Native American tribal governments and tribal organizations, and public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities. This wide eligibility aligns with the multidisciplinary, platform-building nature of the program, where strong teams might include academic labs, medical schools, hospitals, engineering groups, and industry partners that can contribute specialized model development, manufacturing, assay development, or validation expertise.

The program was posted and created on April 7, 2016, with an application closing date of July 6, 2016 (the original and current closing date are the same). The FOA lists an award ceiling of $1,000,000 and anticipates making about 4 awards. Taken together, that suggests a relatively competitive opportunity aimed at supporting a small number of substantial Center-style efforts, each expected to develop high-impact tissue model capabilities rather than a single narrow experiment. The activity category is Health, and the CFDA numbers associated with the opportunity are 93.855 and 93.856, which correspond to NIH programs in allergy, immunology, and infectious diseases and related translational research areas.

Overall, this opportunity is best understood as NIH’s targeted investment in next-generation human tissue modeling for infectious diseases, with the goal of producing in vitro systems that capture human biology more accurately than many existing models. By funding multidisciplinary Centers under a cooperative agreement, the FOA aims to create robust, reusable platforms that can accelerate understanding of infection mechanisms and improve the pipeline for testing interventions in systems that are more predictive of human outcomes.

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