Programs and Activities Highlights
- S10 Symposium
ORIP held its inaugural S10 Symposium on April 23–24, 2026. The symposium was a community-building event for broad instrument users to share S10 know-hows and inform prospective applicants about S10 program requirements and funding opportunities. During the symposium, distinguished S10 awardees shared their knowledge on S10 grantsmanship and post-award management. This milestone event marks an important first step toward establishing the S10 community. - Limited Competition: Instrumentation Grant Program for Resource-Limited Institutions (S10 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
The Instrumentation Grant Program for Resource-Limited Institutions supports the purchase of state-of-the-art scientific instruments to enhance the research and educational missions of resource-limited institutions. Requested instruments may support biomedical research and education in basic, translational, biomedically related behavioral, or clinical fields. ORIP has signed onto this notice of funding opportunity, which invites applications from eligible organizations to apply. - Closeout Site Visit to the University of California, Los Angeles
On February 9, 2026, ORIP staff conducted a virtual closeout site visit to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Human Gene and Cell Therapy Facility, supported by NIH grant C06OD030144. The new 13,000-square-foot Good Manufacturing Practices–compliant facility replaced a 1993 space and features eight processing rooms, two bioengineering rooms, and clean rooms equipped for bioreactors and 3D printers. The facility expands UCLA’s capacity to manufacture cell and bioengineered theragnostic products for more than 20 clinical trials in cancer, HIV/AIDS, sickle cell disease, severe combined immune deficiency, inherited blood disorders, and age-related macular degeneration. This Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold–certified facility has centralized manufacturing, expanded staffing from 5 to 20 full-time equivalents, implemented an electronic quality management system, and significantly strengthened UCLA’s translational and clinical research enterprise. - Closeout Site Visit to Wake Forest University
ORIP staff conducted a virtual closeout site visit on January 21, 2026, to Wake Forest University’s newly constructed Preclinical Imaging and Irradiation (PRIMIR) facility, supported by NIH construction grant C06OD030099. The $7.3 million award funded construction of a 10,287-gross-square-foot, state-of-the-art primate research building at the university’s Clarkson Campus, with total project costs of $15.8 million, including $8.5 million in institutional support. The facility consolidates imaging and irradiation capabilities for nonhuman primates that previously required transportation across the county, significantly reducing stress to the test subjects and improving research reproducibility. The PRIMIR facility features three specialized suites housing a Varian TrueBeam LINAC, Siemens Skyra 3 Tesla MRI, and GE Discovery 64-Slice PET/CT scanner, along with animal biosafety level 2–compliant animal housing, radioisotope-rated infrastructure, and energy-efficient design elements. The facility received its certificate of occupancy in May 2025 and completed its first study in July 2025. It now supports six major research programs, two national NIH-funded primate resources, and two training programs (T32 and T35), serving principal investigators funded by multiple NIH institutes and the U.S. Department of Defense with research on advancing radiation effects, Alzheimer’s disease, aging, substance use, neuro-oncology, and diabetes/metabolic disease studies. - Closeout Site Visit to Columbia University Health Sciences
On January 22, 2026, ORIP staff conducted a virtual closeout site visit to Columbia University Health Sciences’ newly constructed Biobank Resource for Investigating Disease, Genes, and Environment (BRIDGE) Biobanking Facility. Supported by NIH construction grant C06OD030152, the $8 million award funded the creation of a 9,635-square-foot centralized biobanking facility, consolidating fragmented biospecimen storage, aging freezers, and processing activities previously dispersed across campus. The facility features the Azenta BioStore II automated freezer system, with capacity for storing 6 million biospecimens—37% more than originally proposed—at −80°C, along with robust engineering safeguards, including redundant cooling and power systems, waterless fire suppression, emergency generator backup, and dedicated liquid nitrogen backup. Infrastructure supports future expansion to accommodate more than 12 million samples. The facility was commissioned in spring 2025 and has already loaded more than 37,000 biospecimens and migrated more than 1.3 million samples into the OpenSpecimen laboratory information management system, which integrates with electronic health records. The centralized resource now supports 168 studies across the institution, processing blood, serum, plasma, DNA/RNA, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, cerebrospinal fluid, bone marrow, and urine samples with standardized automated workflows. This transformative infrastructure converts fragmented, siloed collections into a scalable, institution-wide resource that accelerates ethically conducted biomedical discovery in Alzheimer’s disease, immunity, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and precision medicine while reducing individual laboratory infrastructure burdens and improving energy efficiency.
Read more in the archive.
ORIP-Supported Research Highlights
- KDM3A Catalyses the Oxidation of Acetyl-Lysine to Hydroxyacetyl-Lysine on Histone H3K9
Histones play an important role in packaging DNA within a cell’s nucleus. Modifications to histones allow DNA to be accessible to make copies of RNA (transcription) or compact to prevent transcription. In this study, researchers found that enzyme KDM3A, known for removing methyl groups from histones to suppress transcription, was found to also oxidize an acetyl group on histone H3—H3K9ac—to produce a novel modification called Nε-hydroxyacetyl-lysine. This modification is still recognized by the same proteins that bind the standard acetyl group to promote transcription. Using human cell lines, antibodies (proteins that bind to a specific target), and mass spectrometry (technique to identify molecules) methods, researchers confirmed its cellular relevance. These findings reveal an unexpected oxygen-dependent link between histone acetylation and KDM3A enzyme activity, with implications for how cells respond to hypoxia and inhibitors of histone enzymes in epigenetic regulation under a hypoxic tumor microenvironment. - Single-Cell Atlas of the Transcriptome and Chromatin Accessibility in the Human Retina
Single-cell sequencing (a technique to study the genetic material of an individual cell) has advanced the capability to explore cell diversity within tissues and across disease states. In this study, researchers created the Human Retina Cell Atlas (HRCA). HRCA has single-cell data for 3.9 million human retina cells (nerve tissue at the back of the eye) from 125 donors of both sexes with various ancestral backgrounds. More than 130 distinct retinal cell types have been identified from analyzing these millions of cells. The researchers modeled how gene expression and chromatin accessibility shift with age, ancestry, and tissue region—factors directly relevant to understanding age-related and population-specific eye diseases. HRCA helps pinpoint genetic factors underlying retinal diseases—including glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration—by improving the mapping of gene variations linked to known genomic dictionaries. HRCA is publicly available so that researchers can access the data; advance the understanding of retinal function; and identify biomarkers, diagnostics, and therapies for eye diseases. - Developmental Organization of Sensory and Sympathetic Ganglia
The underlying mechanisms of cell fate in developmental biology remain poorly understood. During development, the neural crest (a group of cells in the embryo) transforms into a broad range of cell types—including smooth muscle and ganglia (clusters of nerve cell bodies that help transmit signals in the nervous system). In this study, researchers investigated how neural crest cells transform into sensory and sympathetic ganglia during development. Using CRISPR lineage barcoding (a gene-editing method) in 1-month-old mice (sex not stated), live imaging in quail embryos, and mosaic variant barcode analysis of human tissue (both sexes used), the researchers found that progenitor cells spread along the body axis bilaterally (on both sides). Results showed that FGF signaling played an important role in driving the spread of progenitor cells along the body axis. Data also showed limited overlap between sensory and sympathetic cell lineages. These findings play an important role in understanding the origins of developmental disorders and neural crest–related conditions, such as neuroblastoma. The similarity of findings between the human and mouse models supports the use of preclinical models to develop regenerative therapies that target neural crest molecules. - Systematic Discovery of Pro- and Anti-HIV Host Factors in Primary Human CD4+ T Cells
HIV uses parts of the host cell to grow, divide, and cause illness in a person. In this study, researchers mapped which human genes in primary CD4+ T cells help HIV infect cells and which ones block it. The researchers combined genome-wide (the complete set of DNA in a person) CRISPR activation and CRISPR knockout (gene-editing tools used to change a cell’s DNA) screens. The researchers then used pooled and single-gene studies to confirm the strongest hits. Several strong antiviral factors—such as PI16, PPID, SHISA3, and ITM2A—were found. PI16 interferes with HIV entry and fusion with the host cell, while PPID binds the viral capsid (virus shell) and reduces nuclear import of the HIV core. Structural modeling of proteins, evolutionary analysis (comparing human data with nonhuman primate data), and mutagenesis (changing the genetic information) showed certain PPID regions were essential for blocking HIV. Overall, the study provides a robust map of HIV–host interactions and suggests new host-directed strategies for HIV research and therapy. - NSD2 Targeting Reverses Plasticity and Drug Resistance in Prostate Cancer
Most prostate cancer tumors develop resistance to therapies. In castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), lineage plasticity—a cancer cell’s ability to change physical characteristics and behavior—drives disease progression and promotes drug resistance. NSD2 is a protein involved in modifying histones to change gene expression. NSD2 upregulation in neuroendocrine prostate cancer correlates with poor survival and regulates the genes that drive neuroendocrine differentiation. Using both mouse and human patient–derived organoids and 3- to 5-month-old NPp53 mice (sex not stated), researchers successfully reversed treatment resistance in neuroendocrine CRPC by inhibiting NSD2. Notably, combining NSD2 inhibition with enzalutamide (a current drug used to treat prostate cancer) effectively suppressed tumor growth and promoted cell death in multiple CRPC subtypes. These findings establish combination therapy as a promising therapeutic strategy for lethal forms of CRPC that are currently treatment resistant.
Read more in the archive.
