The Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID) has built a comprehensive set of preclinical services to facilitate efforts to develop the next generation of vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics for a broad array of bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic pathogens, as well as novel control approaches for invertebrate vectors of public health importance. Through these in-kind services, eligible investigators worldwide get access to expertise, research materials, and state-of-the-art technologies at minimal or no charge.
What Preclinical Services Are Available?
View and download an infographic explaining the variety of preclinical services that NIAID has developed to address key product development gaps.
How Can Researchers Access Preclinical Services?
Read about the steps you need to tak to access NIAID’s preclinical services for your product development program.
Information about available services, eligibility, product evaluation criteria, and the request process are unique to each program. DMID scientific contacts are listed for each resource and are available to answer questions and provide further guidance about access to these resources.
- In Vitro Assessments of Antimicrobial Activity. These services evaluate promising candidate countermeasures in vitro for antimicrobial activity against microbial pathogens and vectors, including clinical isolates.
- Preclinical Models of Infectious Diseases. These services support the development and refinement of animal models and animal replacement technologies and provide testing in in vivo infection models for promising candidate countermeasures.
- Therapeutic Development Services. These services support the testing and manufacturing of therapeutic agents for infectious diseases, such as small molecules, peptides, monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, and nucleic acid-based vectors (siRNA, plasmids). Services include chemistry and manufacturing, and preclinical safety and pharmacokinetic studies for IND packages (such as ADMET, off-target toxicity profiling, and MTD studies).
- Vaccine Development Services. These services support the testing and manufacturing of vaccines intended for use in the investigation, control, prevention, and treatment of a wide range of infectious agents.
- Diagnostics Development Services. These services offer reagents, platform testing, and planning and design support to accelerate product development of in vitro diagnostics for infectious diseases, from research feasibility through clinical validation.
Additional Resources for Early Preclinical Development
The following resources may have different access processes than the core preclinical services listed above. Please refer to the links below for more information:
Antiviral Program for Pandemics (APP)
The Antiviral Program for Pandemics (APP) aims to develop safe and effective antivirals to combat SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as well as to build sustainable platforms for targeted drug discovery and development of a robust pipeline of antiviral products that directly act against viral targets, specifically for RNA viruses of pandemic potential. No-cost preclinical services are available to support programs that meet the APP requirements.
Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) Biorepository
The Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) Laboratory Center manages a biorepository of bacterial clinical study isolates that are available upon request to investigators. The ARLG Biorepository Strain Catalogue can be used to search for available isolates.
BEI Resources
BEI Resources Repository supplies organisms and reagents to the broad community of microbiology and infectious diseases researchers. Investigators can access materials directly through an online catalog. There is no charge for research materials, but domestic investigators will be required to pay for shipping costs. BEI Resources also encourages and supports the deposit of materials from researchers and institutions.
Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs)
The NIAID Bioinformatics Resource Centers (BRCs) provide data-driven, production-level, sustainable computational platforms to enable sharing, accessing, and analyzing data with various analytical tools and educational materials that support interoperability for the infectious diseases research community.
Centers for Research on Structural Biology of Infectious Diseases (CRSTAL-ID)
The NIAID Centers for Structural Biology of Infectious Diseases (CRSTAL-IDs) characterize the 3D structure of proteins from bacterial, viral, and eukaryotic pathogens using state-of-the-art technologies from computational modeling, x-ray crystallography, NMR and CryoEM. The CRSTAL-IDs additionally have the capacity for supporting the discovery of therapeutics and vaccines using structural-guided design and high throughput chemical screening platforms. Investigators can contact the CRSTAL-ID centers directly to access expert services and to request determinations of protein structures.
Chemistry Center for Combating Antibacterial Resistant Bacteria
The Chemistry Center for Combating Antibacterial Resistant Bacteria (CC4CARB) is an innovative chemistry center focused on the synthesis, acquisition, and distribution of rationally designed, focused libraries for use in Gram-negative antibacterial drug discovery programs at no cost to the global scientific community. The ultimate objective of CC4CARB is to create a large collection of chemical matter specifically targeting Gram-negative antimicrobial drug discovery. Investigators may submit their scaffold proposals for chemical synthesis directly to the CC4CARB website.
Dataset of NCI’s Natural Product Library Screen for Antimicrobial Activity
In collaboration with the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Program for Natural Product Discovery (NPNPD), NIAID screened one of the largest publicly available collections of natural products against three bacterial and one fungal species. A publication on the screening process and results can be be found on PubMed. The screening dataset and instructions for contacting NCI’s Natural Products Branch to acquire natural product libraries or extracts of interest can be found on the NCI wiki.
World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses (WRCEVA)
The World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses (WRCEVA) program maintains the Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses Reference Collection and provides reagents and support for investigations of virus outbreaks throughout the world.
Contact Your Program Officer To Discuss Scientific Services
Contact DMID staff for more information about scientific services.