Category: Funding Opportunities

We have just issued a new “partnership” program announcement for researchers interested in a biological problem of significant scope to collaborate with structural biology researchers.

The announcement is a part of the PSI:Biology initiative, which will apply high-throughput structure determination to a broad range of biological problems. Successful applicants will partner with researchers within the PSI:Biology network.

Applicants should propose projects for which the determination of many protein structures will be important. The projects should also involve proteins amenable to high-throughput structure determination or targets that motivate new technology development for determining more difficult structures.

NIGMS has joined two other NIH institutes and the National Science Foundation in issuing new funding opportunity announcements at the interface of the life and physical sciences. These new interagency initiatives offer an excellent opportunity for biomedical scientists to partner with colleagues in physics, engineering and computation to conduct innovative research with important health implications.

The first new announcement, Transforming Biomedicine at the Interface of the Life and Physical Sciences, targets translational research. It encourages quantitative scientists to team up with biomedical scientists (and potentially a commercial partner) to propose innovative ways to translate technological advances and basic knowledge into important new or improved clinical applications.

The second announcement, New Biomedical Frontiers at the Interface of the Life and Physical Sciences, targets discovery research. By bridging these scientific disciplines, this program aims to support cutting-edge science that has the potential to open up entirely new avenues for biomedical studies. We strongly encourage applications with multiple PIs who represent the physical, computational or engineering and life or behavioral sciences.

Deadlines to apply for both opportunities are May 18, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

I encourage you to take a look at the announcements and identify the types of projects that the participating organizations are seeking based on their research missions. NIGMS, for example, will consider projects that encompass cell biology, biomolecular modeling, nanotechnology, genetics, developmental biology, pharmacology, physiology or biological chemistry.

If you have any questions about the programs, feel free to e-mail me.

We’ve reissued the Collaborative Research for Molecular and Genomic Studies of Behavior in Animal Models program announcement. Applicants must be new collaborators with complementary expertise in animal behavior and in genetics, molecular biology or genomics.

The first deadlines for new applications or resubmissions are June 7, 2010, and July 6, 2010, respectively. You also can submit an application for any of the subsequent standard NIH R01 application deadlines through May 2013.

Want more information? See the funding opportunity announcement, read my post from December or contact me.

The next deadline for NIGMS grantees to apply for our administrative Supplements for Collaborative Science program is May 15, 2010. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this program helps grantees form new collaborations that enhance their NIGMS-funded research efforts. A collaboration may, for example, let a grantee follow up on an exciting, unanticipated discovery or take advantage of recent progress in his or her field.

If you are interested in applying for a collaborative supplement, please contact me, Susan Haynes or your program director.

A new Recovery Act funding announcement from the NIH Office of the Director came out last week, and it offers plenty of opportunities for the NIGMS community.

If you plan to apply for the NIH Director’s Opportunity for Research in Five Thematic Areas (RC4), think big! Only projects with budgets of more than $500,000 in total costs per year for three years will be considered. A key requirement is that the application must be for a research project—no bricks and mortar; no high-end, off-the-shelf instruments—although it can be for a project that develops infrastructure.

The five thematic areas included in the program were enunciated by NIH Director Francis Collins in his first town hall meeting and in the January 1, 2010, issue of Science (PDF 240KB, Acrobat Reader ). They include:

1. Applying genomics and other high-throughput technologies to address questions in a comprehensive way (often described with the word “all,” as in all genes in an organism, all human proteins and their structures, or all major pathways for signal transduction);
2. Translating basic science discoveries into new and better treatments, diagnostics and therapeutics;
3. Using science to enable health care reform—this includes prevention; better and cheaper treatments; research on health disparities, social and behavioral factors; large population studies; comparative effectiveness research; personalized medicine; pharmacogenomics; and health services research;
4. Focusing on global health, from discovery to the development and formulation of prevention and intervention strategies that tackle infectious, parasitic and chronic diseases worldwide; and
5. Reinvigorating the biomedical research community by encouraging new collaborations and by recruiting and retaining new investigators (applications addressing this theme are still expected to be research projects).

Since the funding is limited to three years, projects must have a high short-term impact. Applications for projects with a longer timeframe should include a plan for maintaining the research efforts without any expectation of further financial assistance from NIH.

Letters of intent are due February 15, 2010, and applications are due March 15, 2010.

If you have questions, you can e-mail or call me at 301-594-1158.

We have just issued new program announcements to develop technologies for protein modeling (PAR-10-075, PAR-10-076) and high-throughput structural biology research (PAR-10-074, PAR-10-073). These announcements are part of the PSI:Biology initiative that will apply high-throughput structure determination to a broad range of biological problems. Advances in comparative molecular modeling and high-throughput approaches will play an important role in the success of this initiative.

Protein Modeling

The protein modeling announcements aim to increase the quality of protein structure models. Because they promote collaborative research and exploratory approaches in developing novel comparative modeling technology, we encourage applications from new and established investigators in mathematics, physics, computer science, statistics or other quantitative disciplines.

High-Throughput Structural Biology Research

These announcements solicit proposals for improved experimental methods and techniques for all aspects of structural biology investigations. We particularly welcome projects related to proteins that aren’t currently amenable to high-throughput structural determination by X-ray crystallography and/or NMR spectroscopy.

Successful applicants for all four announcements will become part of the PSI:Biology network.

I can answer specific questions about the modeling announcements, and Charles Edmonds can answer questions about the high-throughput ones.