Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Program: Tissue Procurement Center (R24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

About this grant

The purpose of the Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network is to advance the discovery of biological processes and disease mechanisms mediated by somatic mutations in human tissues. Since 2023, the program has generated multi-omic somatic mutation datasets from a standardized set of human tissues spanning all three germ layers. Building on the Stage 1 foundation, the NIH intends to issue a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) seeking support for the SMaHT Tissue Procurement Center (TPC) initiative. The TPC will enable functional analyses of these healthy and clinically relevant tissue samples, providing critical resources to support characterization of somatic mosaicism and its role in human biology and disease. The Tissue Procurement Center will support the Network by collecting, processing, storing, and rapidly distributing high-quality, well-characterized human tissue specimens. Building on the 150 healthy donors enrolled during Stage 1, the TPC will procure tissues from at least 50 additional healthy donors, bringing the total to 200. The TPC will also collect up to 10 special tissue cohorts. The special tissue cohorts may include: tissues that can be grown in culture, tissues that are of high interest for somatic mosaicism studies, clinically relevant samples, organs that require special handling procedures, and other relevant samples. Awardee will collaborate with other SMaHT Stage 2 initiatives to ensure that the samples are sufficient and useful for running production level assays within the program.