La Jolla Institute For Immunology

La Jolla Institute For Immunology, doing business as La Jolla Institute For Allergy & Immunology, is a non-profit tax-exempt research organization in La Jolla, California that conducts immunological research and operates as a prime recipient on federal grants and contracts, with 71 percent of recent awards in the prime role. The institute works predominantly under full-and-open federal grant mechanisms administered by the National Institutes of Health; it does not compete under small-business set-asides.

The institute's federal footprint is heavily concentrated in investigator-initiated research grants and large-scale cooperative agreements focused on antibody and T-cell epitope discovery, vaccine development, and immune mechanism characterization across infectious diseases, autoimmunity, cancer, and allergy. Representative prime contract work includes a $24.3 million definitive contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) awarded March 15, 2026, to maintain and enhance the Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (IEDB), a central federal resource for experimental antibody and T-cell epitope data, running through December 14, 2030 under cost-no-fee pricing. The institute also holds a $5.455 million NIAID definitive contract for identification and characterization of T-cell epitopes from bacterial pathogens causing pneumonia (awarded September 30, 2024, through September 29, 2029) and a second $5.455 million NIAID contract for identification and validation of epitopes conserved in viral pathogen families with pandemic potential (also awarded September 30, 2024, through September 29, 2029). In FY2025, the second of these contracts invoiced $680 thousand across 4.7 FTEs and 9,747 contractor hours with subcontractors accounting for 51 percent of hours, yielding a government-paid blended rate of $69.76 per hour. Named sub-awardees on pandemic epitope work include Fundacion Universidad Del Norte, Tulane University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and J. Craig Venter Institute.

Customer concentration sits almost entirely with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which accounts for 160 awards and $126.3 million combined potential value across 86 percent of all recent awards. Secondary NIH institutes funding the institute include the National Cancer Institute (27 awards), National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (11 awards), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention placed one contract worth $1 million; the Department of Defense (Navy) and FDA hold a small number of low-value purchase orders. The recompete cliff shows 13 awards reaching ultimate completion in the next twenty-four months.

The institute's federal grant portfolio spans investigator-initiated research (R01, R21, R61/R33 exploratory/development phases), cooperative agreements (U01, U19, P01), and project grants. Recent representative grant recipients include work funded by NIAID's Allergy and Infectious Diseases Research program (CFDA 93.855) on house dust-mite allergen-specific T-cell subsets in allergy and asthma ($764,868, awarded April 1, 2026, through March 31, 2031), characterization of upper airway immune memory kinetics against respiratory pathogens ($159,300, awarded April 2, 2026, through March 31, 2031), development of therapeutic antibody cocktails against New World arenaviruses ($923,708, awarded April 1, 2026, through March 31, 2031 with University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston as sub-recipient), and mapping anti-filovirus humoral immune responses in broadly seroreactive individuals ($279,000, awarded April 1, 2026, through March 31, 2028). The institute also serves as a sub-recipient on numerous prime grants from leading universities, including roles in measles virus antibody response characterization (Columbia University prime), pan-coronavirus vaccine development (Washington University prime), and neuroblastoma neoantigen vaccine work (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia prime), among many others.

The institute competes across NIH mechanisms without set-aside designation and has not pursued small-business certifications. Its recent award activity shows growth from 2022 (21 awards) to 2024 (39 awards) with moderate activity continuing in 2025 and 2026 (22 and 29 awards respectively). SCI-reported invoiced revenue on prime service contracts totaled $28.3 million from FY2022 through FY2025 ($7.9 million in FY2022, $6.9 million in FY2023, $7.8 million in FY2024, and $5.7 million in FY2025), with government-paid median hourly rates around $107/hr and a range spanning $67/hr to $169/hr. The institute's SCI-reported workforce on prime contracts has trended downward from 36.2 FTEs in FY2022 to 18.0 FTEs in FY2025. Across SCI-reportable prime contracts, subcontractors perform approximately 21 percent of total contractor hours, with 33 named sub-vendors identified; the institute acts primarily as a direct performer rather than a service integrator.