Human Virome Program (HVP)

Human Virome Program — Open Funding (Seed)

Offers exploration of the healthy human virome and virus host interactions across translational studies.

The NIH Common Fund's Human Virome Program (HVP) funds research to describe, characterize, and understand the healthy human virome — the collection of viruses that reside in the human body without producing evidence of disease. Conceived as an analog to the Human Microbiome Project but focused on viruses, the program was approved by the NIH Council of Councils in September 2022 and is now in active operation. The FY2026 budget allocation is $31.874 million, representing the second and final full-funding year of the program before it enters a transition or sunset phase.

The program supports four research priorities: cataloging the human virome across a broad range of age groups; developing tools, models, and methods to identify and describe viruses in the human body; studying the interactions between the virome and human physiology; and coordinating data collection and making results broadly accessible to the research community. Eligible applicants include U.S. universities, nonprofit organizations, research organizations, and for-profit entities; individual applicants are not eligible. The FY2026 budget is $31.874 million, down marginally from $32.3 million in FY2025.

Because FY2026 is the second of two full-funding years, investigators should check commonfund.nih.gov/humanvirome for the status of open competitions — new awards may be more limited as the program matures and existing funded projects complete their work. Teams with expertise in virology, metagenomics, microbiome science, bioinformatics, or host-pathogen interactions are the natural audience for this program. The HVP provides a rare opportunity to do foundational cataloging science at a time when tools for viral characterization have advanced dramatically.