Human Virome Program (HVP)

The Human Virome Program (HVP) is the NIH Common Fund route focused on mapping and understanding the healthy human virome, the set of viruses that commonly reside in people without clear evidence of disease, and how that ecosystem interacts with human health. It is directly analogous to a human-microbiome framing but focused on viruses, and it helps expand methods for long-term virology-informed clinical insight. The program is approved by the NIH Council of Councils (September 2022), runs on a rolling cadence, and reports FY26 funding of $31.9 million as the second year in a two-year full-funding sequence. Four primary initiative areas are documented: describing the virome across age cohorts, creating tools and methods to identify and characterize viral signatures, studying interactions between humans and their virome, and coordinating data so it can be reused by other researchers. HVP is suited to teams building virome sampling, bioinformatics, assay, and data-sharing pipelines with a credible translational path into broader biomedical studies. Program records list for-profit, nonprofit, university, and research-organization eligibility with operations based in the United States and no individual-only route.

Each grant below is a distinct funding opportunity with its own eligibility, scope, and deliverables.