Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a sub-agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, administers regulatory oversight of pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, and food safety; its grant portfolio funds research and technical assistance aligned with those missions. The FDA has obligated $50.2 million in federal grant funding across 33 awards since 2013, with recent activity at 3 awards in 2020, 10 in 2021, 3 in 2022, 4 in 2023, and 2 so far in 2024. Combined federal and non-federal share totaled $56.8 million across 25 distinct recipients.

The grant recipient base is highly fragmented by both award count and federal dollars. Over the last five years, the top five recipients by award count hold 67 percent of recent awards but represent highly fragmented concentration; The Critical Path Institute leads with 2 awards totaling $200 thousand in federal dollars obligated, followed by single-award recipients including The University of Texas at San Antonio, West Virginia University Research Corporation, University of Maryland Baltimore, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. By federal dollars obligated over the same window, the top five recipients account for only 3 percent of federal dollars, signaling that funding is distributed across a long tail of recipients. Sonata Scientific LLC and Bioinfoexperts LLC each received single awards exceeding $700 thousand and $296 thousand respectively, while most other recipients received substantially smaller federal shares.

The FDA's grant portfolio is dominated by Project Grants, which account for 30 of 33 awards (91 percent), with Cooperative Agreements comprising the remaining 3 awards (9 percent). The agency has not recorded recent federal contract awards against its own office or descendant sub-offices.