BRAIN Initiative Research Grants

Production/Distribution Facilities for Brain Cell-Type-Specific Access Reagents

Supports creation and distribution of brain cell-type reagents through infrastructure grants.

RFA-MH-25-105, issued under the NIH BRAIN Initiative with NIMH as lead Institute, funds U24 cooperative resource grants to establish production and distribution facilities for molecular genetic reagents enabling cell-type-specific access in the brain. This NOFO is part of the BRAIN Initiative Armamentarium for Precision Brain Cell Access flagship program, which is building a national infrastructure to ensure that BRAIN-funded researchers have reliable, high-quality access to genetic tools—such as adeno-associated viral vectors with cell-type-selective promoters—targeted to defined neuronal and non-neuronal populations. As a U24 cooperative agreement, NIH plays an active programmatic role in coordinating the network of production and distribution centers.

Eligible applicants are U.S. universities and non-profit research organizations; for-profit entities and individual investigators may not serve as primary recipients. Registration and operations must be within the United States. Specific award amounts are not listed in the structured record, but U24 resource grants in flagship BRAIN programs are multi-year awards scaled to support production operations, quality control, and nationwide distribution logistics.

Successful applicants will demonstrate the capacity to produce reagents at scale, implement rigorous quality-assurance protocols, and distribute materials efficiently to the broader BRAIN research community. The Armamentarium program emphasizes standardization and reproducibility across production sites, so applications should address compatibility with community-wide standards for reagent characterization and packaging. Review panels will evaluate production throughput capacity, quality control rigor, and prior experience managing large-scale biological reagent distribution programs.