Category: Funding Opportunities

The NIGMS program supporting research on the evolution of infectious diseases has merged with the ecology of infectious disease program that has been supported primarily by the National Science Foundation and NIH’s Fogarty International Center to create a new funding opportunity announcement.

Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID), also sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, recognizes that infectious disease systems offer a perfect model for studying how context (i.e., ecology) and change (i.e., evolution) interact as organisms adapt to each other. The intersection of ecology and evolution also is relevant to many real-world problems, such as finding new vaccines or understanding how pathogens emerge.

EEID research will advance broad, conceptual knowledge that reaches beyond specific systems and that may be useful for understanding public, agricultural or ecosystem health; natural resource use and wildlife management; and/or economic development.

NIGMS’ particular interest is in the integration of ecological and evolutionary dynamics to address, for example:

• The role of social influences on the susceptibility of individuals or populations,
• Interactions between pathogenic and nonpathogenic organisms and their mutual hosts,
• The emergence of pathogens from nonpathogenic populations,
• Host switching, and
• The evolution and maintenance of drug resistance.

Applications should combine field and laboratory research with mathematical, statistical and computational modeling. We encourage proposals from collaborative teams with expertise from diverse disciplines. Applications are due by December 7 and will be submitted to and reviewed by NSF. NIGMS will consider funding those that score well and are within the Institute’s mission areas.

NIGMS is not re-announcing the EUREKA initiative this fall. However, we’re anticipating that NIH will publish a new initiative for exceptionally innovative, potentially transformative research in the NIH Guide soon. Stay tuned for details!

NIGMS supports a limited number of investigator-initiated clinical trials in selected areas related to its mission, including trauma, burn and peri-operative injury; wound healing; sepsis; and anesthesiology and peri-operative pain.

We will now offer planning grants (see PAR-11-287) to enable the assembly of the organizational elements and documentation needed for a clinical trial R01 application. This will also permit early peer review of the scientific rationale of a proposed trial.

Before applying for a planning grant, we strongly recommend consulting with the appropriate NIGMS program staff listed in the funding opportunity announcement to determine whether the goal of the proposed trial aligns with the NIGMS mission and scientific priorities.

Letters of intent for the planning grants are due by September 24, 2011, and applications are due by October 24, 2011. We will accept subsequent submissions on the same dates in 2012 and 2013.

As this planning grant program proceeds, we will assess its value to applicants, and we welcome your feedback at any time. For more information, please see the NIGMS Web site on Clinical Studies and Trials.

For 25 years, NIGMS has supported AIDS-related structural biology research that has provided fundamental insights into the replication of HIV and contributed toward the development of essential therapeutics.

As Joe Gindhart discussed in an earlier Feedback Loop post, NIGMS marked the anniversary of this program with a special meeting in March. Many participants expressed excitement and offered overwhelmingly positive feedback about the program, in particular the progress and achievements reported from the three P50 Centers for the Determination of Structures of HIV/Host Complexes: Center for the Structural Biology of Cellular Host Elements in Egress, Trafficking and Assembly of HIV, HIV Accessory and Regulatory Complexes and Center for HIV Protein Interactions.

Following endorsement by our Advisory Council at its meeting last month, we plan to reissue the centers RFA this summer. The new RFA will encompass the goals of the previous one, but will be broadened to include RNA/protein and membrane/protein interactions and a push to move beyond static structures to characterize the dynamics of complexes as a way to improve future drug design. This reissued RFA will also include a new requirement for a collaborative development program intended to recruit skilled investigators, especially early stage investigators, into AIDS-related structural biology research. We expect to fund four or five centers for a 5-year period.

I will post more information about this funding opportunity once it has been published in the NIH Guide.

Have an idea for a great collaboration that will advance your NIGMS-funded research project? If your current award has active funding through at least November 30, 2012, you may be eligible to jump-start your idea with an administrative supplement for collaborative science. The next submission deadline is May 15, 2011.

To ensure that your project is appropriate for this program, please review the funding opportunity announcement. You should also discuss the project idea with your NIGMS program director before preparing an application. For general questions about the program, contact me or Marion Zatz.

Do you have an idea for a great collaboration that will advance your NIGMS-funded research project? If your current award has active funding through at least July 31, 2012, you may be eligible to jump-start your idea with an administrative supplement for collaborative science. The next submission deadline is January 15, 2011.

To be sure that your project is appropriate for this program, please review the funding opportunity announcement. You should also discuss the project idea with your NIGMS program director before preparing an application. For general questions about the program, contact me at hayness@nigms.nih.gov or Marion Zatz at zatzm@nigms.nih.gov.

NIGMS has just issued a call for Program Projects for Collaborative Research on the Basic Biology of Pluripotency and Reprogramming (P01), with an emphasis on human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. We are particularly interested in studies that propose comprehensive analyses of the basic biology of pluripotency, the molecular events and mechanisms of reprogramming, and the epigenetics and epigenomics of the pluripotent and reprogrammed states.

These applications have special requirements, so please read the announcement carefully. Letters of intent are due on November 1, and applications are due on December 1.

If your research involves stem cells but isn’t appropriate for this announcement, you may submit an investigator-initiated R01 application that addresses the basic biology of stem cells and/or uses these cells as model systems to study fundamental life processes.

You may contact me at hayness@nigms.nih.gov or Marion Zatz at zatzm@nigms.nih.gov with questions about this new opportunity or about NIGMS support for stem cell research.