National Institutes of Health (NIH), Chemical Preparedness Research and Medical Countermeasure Development

The NIH CCRP supports therapeutic discovery and early-stage drug development for chemical injuries. Mass chemical exposure incidents present significant challenges for emergency preparedness and medical response. Chemical exposures can cause rapidly evolving injuries that require treatment within minutes, placing substantial demands on civilian healthcare systems and emergency responders. In many cases, responders must begin treatment before the specific chemical agent has been identified. Therapeutics that target common injury syndromes across multiple chemical threats can strengthen national medical response capabilities. NIH-supported research defines the toxicity, mechanisms of injury, and pathophysiology of chemical exposures to identify therapeutic targets and enable the discovery of chemical-agnostic candidate medical countermeasures. The NIH CCRP provides the foundational scientific evidence needed to advance promising therapeutics into later stages of development, complementing HHS BARDA's mission to develop, manufacture, and deploy medical countermeasures. Since chemical exposures can affect multiple organ systems, development of effective treatments requires a coordinated, trans-NIH approach spanning neurology, pulmonary and respiratory medicine, dermatology, ophthalmology, toxicology, and environmental health sciences. BARDA's advanced development programs rely on the mechanistic understanding of toxicity, injury pathways, and disease pathophysiology generated through NIH CCRP-supported research, making CCRP a critical component of the medical countermeasure development pipeline.