NIH: Shutdown Threatens Critical Global Virus Repository

For more than seventy-five years, the World Reference Center for Emerging Viruses and Arboviruses, now housed at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), has served as a cornerstone of US and global infectious disease preparedness and response. Supported by continuous NIH funding for more than five decades, until its termination in 2025, the center maintains and curates a globally unique collection of more than 9,000 virus strains, including many that are rare, geographically diverse, or no longer circulating. Its mission is to collect, preserve, study, and securely and rapidly distribute viral samples to qualified academic, public, and industry laboratories for research, an essential capability for accelerating research responses during health emergencies.

For example, during the Zika epidemic, the center's extensive archive of viruses from prior outbreaks made it the only lab in the world with such a geographically diverse collection. As a result, it was able to supply samples quickly to researchers worldwide, enabling US scientists and diagnostic developers to respond months faster than would otherwise have been possible. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the center was called upon by NIH to support the national and global response. It became the first laboratory in the world to provide SARS-COV-2 isolates and viral RNA necessary for laboratories to rapidly develop and validate urgently needed diagnostic tests. Using its unique sample collection, the center also produced foundation early research on how vaccine- and infection-derived immunity is impacted by emerging variants.

Although coronaviruses and respiratory viruses are not the center's primary focus and its NIH-directed COVID work had already concluded, its NIH grant was abruptly terminated in early 2025 due to the association with prior COVID-related work. The center has since appealed this decision without success and reapplied for funding; while its new application received a perfect score of 10 from the scientific review panel, federal support has not yet been restored.

The termination of NIH support has had immediate and lasting consequences. While UTMB has stepped in to maintain critical infrastructure in the near term, such a secure biocontainment freezers, the center has been forced to scale back its operations substantially. Approximately half of its highly trained staff have been lost, eroding decades of accumulated expertise in high-containment virology and significantly slowing the turnaround time for providing virus samples, a significant liability if a new deadly outbreak were to occur today. Rebuilding this workforce will be time-consuming and require substantial investment, as staff must undergo extensive specialized training to safely handle high-risk pathogens. Without restored federal funding, the center faces growing financial instability and diminished ability to serve the scientific and public health communities. The loss of the World Reference Center would represent not only the erosion of a unique and irreplaceable national research asset, but also reduced return on decades of prior federal investment in preparedness infrastructure and workforce development, leaving the United States less prepared to respond to the next epidemic or pandemic.