Programs and Activities Highlights
- 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.
- Fiscal Year 2025 C06 Post-Award Webinar
On November 20, 2025, ORIP held an informational webinar to kick off fiscal year 2025 NIH C06 construction projects. More than 75 participants from all 14 grantee institutions attended, representing various project roles, including principal investigators, signing officials, project managers, and architect/engineering team members. The webinar covered such key topics as project and budget timelines, design requirements, technical review processes, environmental policy, NIH grant compliance, and reporting requirements throughout the grant period and 10-year duration of Federal Interest following project completion. ORIP’s Division of Construction and Instruments supports programs that fund the construction, renovation, and modernization of research space by issuing notices of funding opportunities when congressional appropriations are available. The overall objective of these programs is to provide modernized physical infrastructure that meets up-to-date engineering requirements to conduct cutting-edge NIH-funded biomedical research.
- Closeout Site Visit to the University of Miami
On December 18, 2025, ORIP staff conducted a virtual site visit to the University of Miami (UM) Miller School of Medicine’s centralized biospecimen repository facility, supported by NIH grant C06OD030170. Opened in January 2025, this facility has expanded storage capacity from 500,000 to 5 million specimens, featuring automated −80°C modular storage with triple-redundant backup systems and continuous monitoring to ensure sample integrity. Advanced capabilities include biological safety cabinets, cryogenic storage, and dedicated clinical trials infrastructure supporting NIH-funded research, multisite collaborations, and precision medicine initiatives with electronic medical record integration. The facility has managed 1.2 million samples across 222 studies, serving 68 principal investigators from 17 UM departments and 11 external partners. This infrastructure strengthens UM’s competitiveness for NIH funding and faculty recruitment while advancing the UM Precision Medicine Initiative (UPROMISE) in Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, neurological disorders, and infectious diseases research, with regional impact on the broad biomedical research field.
Read more in the archive.
ORIP-Supported Research Highlights
- 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.
- Therapeutic Remodeling of the Ceramide Backbone Prevents Kidney Injury
Acute kidney injury (AKI) can be caused by a broad range of conditions, including drug toxicity, sepsis, preexisting kidney disorders, and heart failure. AKI increases a person’s chance for chronic kidney disease, morbidity, and mortality, but an effective therapy for AKI is not currently available. Proximal tubules (PTs) within the kidney secrete nonfiltered substances while reabsorbing filtered molecules. Abnormal lipid metabolism and lipid imbalances are linked to AKI, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Using previously published data, urine samples from patients, and 8- to 11-week-old male mouse models, researchers showed that AKI triggers the production of toxic ceramides in PTs and that urine ceramide levels correlate with disease severity. Ceramides disrupt mitochondrial structure and function by altering critical protein complexes, and damage requires a specific molecular feature of ceramides created by the DES1 enzyme. Genetic deletion of DES1 protected mice from kidney injury following bilateral ischemia reperfusion. A novel DES1 inhibitor provided a protective effect, offering a promising therapeutic strategy. This work reveals ceramide remodeling as a promising target for treating AKI.
- Gastrointestinal MAIT Cells in Chronic HIV-1 Infection
Mucosa-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are innate-like T cells abundant in blood and the gastrointestinal tract. They help control infections by producing immunoproteins, killing infected cells, and hindering microbial growth. Chronic HIV infection reduces MAIT cells and increases vulnerability to secondary infections. In this work, researchers studied immunological responses of blood and mucosal MAIT cells to microbes between people (both sexes) with chronic HIV who are on long-term antiretroviral therapy and people without HIV. While MAIT cells were depleted in the blood of HIV-infected individuals, mucosal MAIT cell levels remained comparable between the two groups. Blood MAIT cells responded robustly to general immune stimulation. However, mucosal MAIT cells responded poorly to Escherichia coli bacterial stimulation, suggesting selective unresponsiveness to normal microbes while maintaining immune functions to other stimuli. HIV-infected individuals showed an impaired MAIT cell antimicrobial defense, providing novel insights worth studying.
- Metabolomic Profiling and Characterization of a Novel 3D Culture System for Studying Chondrocyte Mechanotransduction
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic degenerative joint disease that affects more than 37% of people over age 60. The pericellular matrix (PCM), the microenvironment that directly surrounds each cartilage cell, plays an important role in mechanotransduction. This process allows cells to sense changes in outside physical forces and convert them into electrical signals and cartilage functions. Using a novel 3D culture system equipped with cyclical compression and loading stimulation to mimic physiological conditions, researchers studied human and bovine cartilage cell mechanotransduction under different cell culture conditions. Metabolomic profiling—a way of observing all chemical changes within a cell that produces compounds and energy for biological processes—showed unique changes and strong PCM development as indicated by the production of both collagens VI and II, suggesting the 3D culture system replicates the native PCM and physiological stiffness of cartilage. By providing a physiologically relevant 3D model, future studies can look into OA pathways, cartilage tissue engineering, and novel therapies.
- Deep Learning Approaches for Classifying Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Inertial Measurement Unit Hand Tracking Data: Comparative Study
Studies show that 50% to 88% of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have differences in movement control. Researchers used an inertial measurement unit (IMU), an electronic device that measures aspects of the body, to track arm movements in 41 children (both sexes) with and without an ASD diagnosis during a hand–eye coordination task. The IMU data were used in multiple deep learning models, and the best model was retrained and reevaluated, resulting in an accuracy of 91.87% and an F1-score (a performance metric for deep learning models) of 93.66%. The study showed that different physical movement patterns in children with ASD can be identified by analyzing hand–eye coordination skills and suggested that small-scale deep learning models have the potential to help diagnose ASD.
Read more in the archive.
