NIH Awards $14.5 million Grant to Develop a Data Center for the Human Virome Program
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a new research program to understand how the viruses that live within the human body or on the skin—known as the human virome—can impact a person’s health.
As a critical part of NIH’s , the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine will receive $14.5 million over the next five years to establish a comprehensive and cutting-edge data center. The Consortium Organization and Data Collaboration Center (CODCC) will house and analyze data for the program. Owen White, PhD, Associate Director at IGS and Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at UMSOM is leading effort to launch the CODCC.
Owen White, PhD
Like the better understood microbiome—composed of bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms -- the human virome contains millions of viruses that impact health both positively and negatively. The new program—made possible through the NIH’s —provides funding to 16 locations to study the impact of viruses across ages, sex, ancestry, and geographic locations.
“Most current technologies and tools can only help us understand a small portion of the virome, so this award will enable us to close the scientific knowledge gap through a combination of experimental, computational, and data-generation activities,” Dr. White explained. “We will develop new analytics tools and a user-friendly portal, so researchers can easily access the data generated by our counterparts in the program. IGS has an extensive background in working with data from other NIH projects so we are excited to use our expertise once again to better the field.”
Those data collaborations between IGS and NIH include the , the (NeMO), the (SCORCH), and the .
The IGS team will develop and maintain a searchable Human Virome Reference Dataset that will benefit scientists and be publicly accessible. As part of this virome data portal, they will standardize, store, and disseminate data. Key to this will be the creation of a toolkit for virome analysis and visualization, along with developing new methods to integrate mutli-omics into the understanding of the virome’s interaction within the body.
To develop all the tools needed within the COCCC, IGS scientists will also work with researchers from the Broad Institute, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis, Baylor College of Medicine, and Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory. One key collaborator is Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who will work with the IGS team to develop and optimize cloud-based data analysis pipelines specifically tailored to the needs of each site in the HVP consortium.
“Another key aspect of this grant is developing training programs for our counterparts on the grant, as well as educating other scientists and the public about our findings,” said , a co-investigator on the grant, and Associate Director for Education and Outreach at IGS. The consortium held their first meeting in Rockville, Maryland in mid-January.
“Our Institute for Genome Sciences is uniquely positioned to partner with the NIH to develop and use the computational and bioinformatics tools needed to integrate with clinical data to gain knowledge about the human virome,” said , Dean of UMSOM and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, and Vice President for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, Baltimore. “We know a great deal about harmful viruses as well as commensal viruses that live in a host without harming or helping it. Now it’s critical to understand what constitutes a beneficial human virome so that we can harness it to help people, especially considering our aging population.”
