Health Research, Inc.

Health Research, Inc. Wadsworth Center Division, operating as Health Research At The Wadsworth Center, is a non-profit research laboratory and testing facility based in Menands, New York that acts as a federal grant recipient in infectious disease research, food defense testing, and public health laboratory services. The organization is a child entity of the parent non-profit Health Research, Inc., and competes as a prime recipient on federal grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health and other agencies; it does not hold federal contracts or contract vehicles.

The Wadsworth Center's federal footprint centers on biomedical research and reference laboratory testing. Representative prime grant work includes a $2.055 million NIAID Project Grant (CFDA 93.855) awarded July 2025 for therapeutic development of mycobacteriophage D29-lysin against Mycobacterium abscessus infections, with completion targeted for June 2030; a $960,000 FDA Cooperative Agreement (CFDA 93.103) awarded September 2025 to provide integrated radiochemical, microbiological, and chemical testing services for the FDA's Food Emergency Response Network (FERN), building on its role as New York State's laboratory of last resort; a $403,756 NIAID Project Grant (CFDA 93.855) awarded April 2026 to map determinants of bedaquiline resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis through saturating mutagenesis and database validation; and a $222,508 USDA APHIS Cooperative Agreement (CFDA 10.028) awarded January 2025 to perform rabies laboratory testing supporting the USDA Wildlife Services Oral Rabies Vaccination campaign. Additional representative work includes a Project Grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (CFDA 93.172) supporting development of polymer-based cell culture substrates for correlative light and electron microscopy, and ongoing cooperative agreements with the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health for biomonitoring program support assessing environmental chemical exposure disparities across communities.

Customer concentration aligns heavily with the National Institutes of Health ecosystem. The top five customer agencies by award count, representing 65% of all awards, are NIH broadly (94 awards), NIAID (44 awards, $7.6 million combined potential value), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (20 awards, $20.1 million), USDA APHIS (17 awards), and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (14 awards). By potential-value ranking, NICHD dominates with $20.1 million across 20 awards, followed by NIAID at $7.6 million across 44 awards and NIDDK at $3.3 million across 3 awards, together accounting for 95% of combined potential value. The concentration signal shows NICHD anchors the largest dollar awards while NIAID drives volume through multiple smaller grants.

The Wadsworth Center engages with federal IDIQs on limited basis — two indefinite delivery contracts are named: HHSN275201100001I (11 task orders, $4.2 million combined potential value) and HHSN275201600001I (4 task orders, $1.6 million combined potential value), both HHS vehicles. The center operates as prime on 91% of recent awards and sub-recipient on 9%; sub-grantee relationships include work under the Association of Public Health Laboratories (viral vaccine preventable disease testing, influenza reference center services, threat-agnostic sentinel surveillance workflows, and enterovirus panel production) and technical support roles with Columbia University (TB drug-resistance phenotyping and reporter phage assay development), UC Los Angeles (resistance profiling in the ACTG PHOENIx trial), and Seattle Children's Hospital (environmental chemical exposure analysis in adolescent cohorts).

Activity has grown from six awards annually in 2022 to a recent peak of 15 in 2024, followed by 14 in 2025, indicating sustained growth trajectory. Thirteen awards carrying combined completion dates in the next twenty-four months face recompete exposure. The capability portfolio reflects the Center's identity as a world-class public health research institute: infectious disease research and diagnostics (tuberculosis drug resistance, mycobacteriophage therapy, rabies and arboviruses), food defense and emergency response laboratory testing (radiochemistry, microbiology with sequencing and GenomeTrakr integration, chemistry), environmental biomonitoring and chemical exposure assessment, and specialized microscopy methods development. Top NAICS codes are Testing Laboratories and Services (19 awards) and Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services (4 awards); top PSCs are Health R&D Services and Applied Research (12 awards) and Reference Laboratory Testing (8 awards). The center maintains core sequencing, mass spectrometry, and inorganic chemistry laboratory infrastructure that recurs across multiple federal programs.