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Program History
Within the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Division of AIDS (DAIDS) was established in 1986 to support extramural basic and applied research to control and prevent diseases caused by HIV and other infectious agents. Through research grants and contracts, investigators have worked to develop and evaluate therapeutics, vaccines, and diagnostics to accomplish the mission of NIAID. An important rate-limiting step in basic and preclinical research has been the identification and availability of high-quality, authenticated research materials.
To address this need, NIAID established the NIH AIDS Research and Reference Reagent Program in 1988 as a small bank of HIV strains, antibodies, peptides, antiviral drugs, and cell lines deposited from investigators and institutions and shared at no cost among the HIV research community. Depositing materials with the program had many advantages to the donor and the research community, including secure storage, community access, and distribution, all while protecting the intellectual property rights of the depositor. The program also served as an information resource for scientists, a liaison for communication in establishing partnerships, and a provider of technical assistance on handling and shipping infectious substances.
Since the publication of the first catalog in 1988, listing 62 reagents from 20 contributors, the program evolved into a unique worldwide resource of more than 9000 state-of-the-art research materials for HIV and other pathogens from hundreds of contributors. The name also changed, first to the NIH AIDS Reagent Program and, more recently, to the NIH HIV Reagent Program. As many reagents in the program were not commercially available or too costly or difficult for individual laboratories to obtain, the value of the NIH AIDS Reagent Program was evident from the diversity of registered users, growing to nearly 3,200 scientists located in 65 different countries. In 2008, the program was named in the journal Science as one of three relatively modest NIH investments that advanced the HIV/AIDS field year after year (https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.321.5888.518).
Since 2020, the HIV Reagent Program was managed under contract by American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38192205/). In January 2024, the NIH HIV Reagent Program became part of BEI Resources, NIAID’s centralized research reagent repository for infectious disease research. The programs owe much of their success to the generosity of many investigators, including those from the private sector, who shared their reagents and information with the scientific community. The support of all these individuals is gratefully acknowledged.
BEI Resources looks forward to continuing to serve the needs of the HIV research community. Please visit https://www.beiresources.org/About/BEIResources.aspx to learn more about the BEI Resources program.