Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia

Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, doing business as U.p.c.h., is a private Peruvian research university that receives federal funding as both a prime recipient of federal grants and contracts and as a sub-recipient and subcontractor on research awards, with no awarded federal contract vehicles of its own. The institution operates as a non-profit educational entity headquartered in Lima, Peru (Av. Honorio Delgado 430, San Martín de Porres 15102), competing on full-and-open awards without set-aside designations.

U.p.c.h.'s federal footprint centers on infectious disease research, epidemiology, and global health training funded primarily through the National Institutes of Health and the Department of the Navy. As a prime recipient, the institution has secured federal grants in research ethics training in Latin America, HIV prevention and control in the Peruvian Armed Forces, and parasitic disease trials (oxfendazole for neurocysticercosis and fascioliasis, cysticercosis and campylobacteriosis surveillance). Representative prime awards include a $706,193.71 firm fixed-price definitive contract from the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (September 2023 to September 2028) for infectious disease surveillance research support services—a 66-month longitudinal prospective study establishing surveillance systems for diarrheal and respiratory infections affecting deployed military personnel, with work in Lima and Cusco, Peru. U.p.c.h. also holds a cooperative agreement from the Defense Health Agency (awarded September 2023, extended through September 2027) for technical assistance strengthening post-pandemic HIV prevention and control capacities in the Peruvian Armed Forces, with total funded amount of $2,018,772. Additional prime work includes purchase orders from the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery for malaria surveillance, field activities supporting the Medical Training and Mentoring (MTM) course at Centro de Salud Global Tumbes, and medical equipment rental or use.

Customer concentration is narrow and heavily weighted toward research and medical sponsors. The Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery leads by award count with 70 awards (combined potential value $10.1 million) and dominates potential value concentration. The National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center accounts for 48 awards, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases carries 35 awards with $50 thousand combined potential value. The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute holds 17 awards worth $4.9 million combined potential value. These five customer agencies account for 76% of all awards and 98% of combined potential value. The Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery alone represents a significant recompete cliff, with 10 awards (combined potential value $730 thousand) reaching completion within the next twenty-four months.

U.p.c.h. operates primarily as a prime recipient in the grant space (63% prime awards) but engages extensively as a sub-recipient under major research institutions. Named prime grantees routing work to U.p.c.h. include Vanderbilt University Medical Center (the CCASAnet HIV epidemiology network, Peru Vanderbilt PREVENT vaccination training program), the University of Pennsylvania (infectious disease training programs, surveillance system adoption assessments), Johns Hopkins University (TB point-of-care diagnostics, TB and respiratory training), the Regents of the University of California San Francisco (malaria epidemiology and trial coordination, land use change and emerging pathogen assessment in Madre de Dios), Stanford University (vector-borne disease surveillance in Madre de Dios), Duke University (border health surveillance and data collection in Loreto), Emory University (GEOHealth hubs), and Yale University (immunology and laboratory work). In contract work, U.p.c.h. subcontracts to La Jolla Institute for Immunology as a sub-recipient performing T cell epitope discovery and TB immunology research including patient enrollment, clinical sample collection and processing, and laboratory analyses.

The institution's geographic footprint spans multiple Peruvian regions—Lima (main administrative campus and research facilities), Tumbes (Center for Global Health), Cusco (Tropical Medicine Institute), Iquitos and the Peruvian Amazon region, Arequipa, Puno, and remote endemic areas including the Madre de Dios region on the border with Brazil and Ecuador. Field operations support clinical trials, epidemiologic surveillance, vector biology research, and capacity-building training programs across highland, coastal, and Amazon environments.

Activity has remained relatively steady across the five-year window, with 18 awards in 2022 rising to 26 in 2023 and 25 in 2024, then declining to 15 in 2025 and 13 in 2026 year-to-date. Combined potential value across all 242 prime and sub awards is $16.1 million, though combined dollars obligated ($125.9 million) far exceed potential value, reflecting the institution's role in executing multi-year research grants with staggered funding releases. Service Contract Inventory data show minimal SCI-reportable activity—three records spanning FY2022 to FY2024, all as a named subcontractor, with roughly 1.4 to 2.0 FTEs in the SCI dataset—reflecting the institution's position outside traditional federal service-contracting streams. UPCH's research mission focuses on parasitic infections, vector-borne diseases, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, non-communicable disease epidemiology, neuroscience training, and population health surveillance in the Peruvian Amazon and Andean regions, with particular emphasis on global health capacity-building partnerships with U.S. research institutions.