NIH awards $20M to fund human virus research center co-led by Gillings School

January 27, 2025

A team of researchers across the country wants to gain a better picture of the more than 200 known viruses that can impact our health – and discover more that are yet unknown. With $20 million in new funding from the Common Fund of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), these scientists will establish a center to study the structure and impact of each virus as part of a larger ecosystem called the human virome.

Kari North, PhD, associate dean for research and professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is one of four principal investigators for the new Vanderbilt-coordinated Virus Characterization Center. The center will be led by Suman Das, PhD, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and co-led by North; Susan Fisher-Hoch, MD, at UTHealth Houston; and Ravi Shah, MD, at VUMC.

North’s team at the Gillings School includes Heather Highland, PhD, assistant professor of epidemiology, and Victoria Buchanan, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in epidemiology.

This center is critical, North said, because we currently have very little understanding of the breadth of impact that viruses have on human health and disease.

Dr. Kari North

“This is in large part because most previous studies have been focused on pathogenic viruses with obvious clinical effects,” she explained. “Our project is set to identify viruses that have non-pathogenic effects or have not previously been associated with symptoms – akin to the advances we have made in interrogating the microbiome – revealing the important roles of bacteria that were previously unappreciated.”

North, who leads the strategic vision for research at the Gillings School, is a genetic epidemiologist with more than 20 years of experience researching the ways that human genes contribute to health conditions, such as cardiovascular and liver disease, especially among Hispanic/Latino populations. She will co-lead the new center’s Data Analysis and Submission Core, which will manage, process, analyze and share data among institutional collaborators.

The Vanderbilt-coordinated Virus Characterization Center (V2C2), will analyze biological samples from more than 2,000 Hispanic/Latino individuals living on the Texas-Mexico border to identify and understand the viruses present. They will use this information to build a database that can bring a better understanding of the impact that viruses have on our health – even viruses that do not cause illness. It may also lead to the discovery of new biomarkers for disease, health conditions and new therapeutic approaches.

Their diverse study population is part of a historically marginalized group that experiences high rates of adverse social determinants of health and a high prevalence of metabolic disease disparity even at an early age. Thus, the team will observe viruses across the human lifespan, with participants studied repeatedly over a period of years.

The center will build on the excellent track record of virology research at the Gillings School.

“We are standing on the shoulders of giants at UNC,” North commented. “We hope to broaden our understanding of the importance of viruses both for human health and for human disease.”

The new V2C2 is one of five funded projects that will receive $171 million, pending available funds, to launch multidisciplinary and innovative teams under the NIH Common Fund Human Virome Program. The program’s three aims are to describe the healthy human virome by following diverse groups of volunteers across multiple stages of life, develop new ways to study the human virome, and to better understand where viruses are found across multiple human tissues and how they interact with our complex immune system.

The Gillings School is proud to be part of this immense investment from NIH into virome research.

Contact the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health communications team at sphcomm@unc.edu.