NIH HIV Incidence Assays with Improved Specificity (R01)

This grant encourages applications from institutions/ organizations that propose to develop improved HIV Incidence Assays with increased specificity and reliability for distinguishing incident from chronic HIV infections, especially cost-effective assays and algorithms with improved specificity and reliability for determining HIV incidence.  Ideally, the assay would be accurate for diverse HIV-1 subtypes and could be performed in resource limited settings.


For more information, go to: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-012.html

Application budgets are not limited, but need to reflect actual needs of the proposed project.  The next deadline is 7 January 2011.  The deadline following that one will be 7 May 2011.

NIH Exploratory Developmental Research Grant Program (Parent R21)

The R21 mechanism is intended to encourage new exploratory and developmental research projects. 

All subjects and disciplines are eligible, but the research must be high-risk, high-impact, and highly innovative.

For example, such projects could assess the feasibility of a novel area of investigation or a new experimental system that has the potential to enhance health-related research.  Another example could include the unique and innovative use of an existing methodology to explore a new scientific area. These studies may involve considerable risk but may lead to a breakthrough in a particular area, or to the development of novel techniques, agents, methodologies, models, or applications that could have a major impact on a field of biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research.

This grant is worth $275,000 over 2 years.  The nearest deadline is 16 February 2012


For more information, see: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-10-069.html

NIH Research Project Grant (Parent R01)

The Research Project Grant (R01) is an award made to an institution/organization to support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in areas representing the specific interests and competencies of the investigator(s). All disciplines/subjects are eligible to apply.


The R01 research plan proposed by the applicant institution/organization must be related to the stated program interests of one or more of the NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) based on descriptions of their programs (contact the Faculty of Tropical Medicine Office of Research Services for assistance identifying which IC to apply to).


For more information, see:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-11-260.html


The funding is for 3-5 years and the budget depends on the scope of the project.


The next deadline is 5 February 2011.  There are regular deadlines every February, June, and October.

The Gates Vaccine Innovation Award

The Gates Foundation invites you to nominate individuals or a group of individuals who have achieved significant improvements in the prevention, control, or elimination of vaccine-preventable diseases through immunization.  Nominees will be assessed on three broad criteria:

• Impact – The nominee should have achieved significant improvements in the prevention, control, or elimination of vaccine-preventable disease.
• Innovation and creativity – The nominee should have applied imaginative and pioneering approaches to overcome difficult challenges to immunizing children and achieving impact.
• Scale – The nominee’s innovation should be at scale or suitable to be implemented at scale within the nominee’s country and around the world.

For more information, please see: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/vaccines/Pages/vaccine-innovation-award.aspx

This award is focused ONLY on programs and policies associated with achieving impact through the delivery of vaccines.

The award winner will be recognized with $250,000 (U.S.) and personally acknowledged by Gates Foundation leadership.

Nominations will be accepted through 11:30 AM Pacific Standard Time on November 17, 2011.

Limited Competition: Framework Programs for Global Health Innovation (D43)

This grant aims to provide support for the development of broadly interdisciplinary training programs in global health directed towards encouraging innovation in products, processes, and policies.  Trainees should be at the postdoctoral level or have attained a terminal degree in their fields.  Training projects should identify critical health needs in Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) that can be addressed through Innovation, and carry out the scientific research necessary to develop, validate, and test their concepts. To increase the translation of research findings into realized health benefits, project design should include considerations of implementation appropriate to low resource settings in LMICs, particularly regarding increased effectiveness, affordability, accessibility, ease of use or delivery, and/or scalability.


The 3 goals of this grant are: 


1.  To expand the base of expertise needed and available to tackle the challenging problems of global health by developing trans-institutional, problem-solving based research training programs that will bring together trainees of widely diverse expertise to work together on research problems in Global Health.


2. To stimulate new knowledge, approaches, and solutions in global health.


3. To integrate global health research communities within and among institutions by building capacity at the institution(s) to support an interdisciplinary research training program in Global Health Innovation.


The application must include participation by at least three Schools, departments, or entities of distinct disciplines, either at the applicant institution or among a consortium.  Subspecialties within a field, such as Medicine, would not qualify as distinct disciplines, and three departments within one School are unlikely to meet this standard.


This grant is worth $350,000 in total costs per year over 5 years.  The deadline is 15 December 2011.


For more details, see:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-12-003.html

Request for Proposals: Targeted Biomedical Research Exploring the mechanisms for HIV persistence and the potential for HIV eradication

amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is pleased to announce the availability of targeted support for biomedical research projects relevant to exploring the mechanisms for HIV persistence and the potential for HIV eradication in the following areas of research:

• Novel strategies/approaches for preventing the establishment of, or eliminating, viral reservoirs
• Understanding and characterizing cellular and tissue locations of reservoirs and their relative importance in maintaining infection in the face of ART and the immune system
• Understanding the extent to which persistence is due to true latency versus low level replication. How does the effect of ART differ in each case?
• Is there a threshold viral load below which infection will not be re-seeded?
• Studies in elite controllers and/or acute (i.e. the absence of antibody positivity) infection cohorts that may help define new mechanisms of persistence that are not HLA-driven.
• Does persistent immune activation point to a need for long-term immune reconstitution strategies? Are there benefits to immune therapy?
• Improved assays to quantify integrated versus unintegrated DNA, or characterize replication competence. Do these differ between tissues, in patients treated during acute versus chronic infection, or in progressors versus controllers?
• Improved assays to more efficiently and inexpensively measure extremely low viral load (e.g., to 0.01 copies/ml) or (changes in) the size of the persistent reservoir.
• Deep sequencing approaches to compare viruses in different tissue compartments with those in plasma following treatment interruption, with a view to identifying sources of viral rebound
• What are the consequences of chronic immune activation, in the presence or absence of ART, on tissues such as the gut, and can the damage be reversed if immune activation is controlled?

Act fast!  The deadline is 25 October 2011.  The grant is worth 250,000 USD over two years

See the link for more information.

http://www.amfar.org/lab/grants/default.aspx?id=10364#Submission_Requirements_and_Deadlines

NIH/PEPFAR Collaboration for Advancing Implementation Science in Prevention of Maternal-Child HIV Transmission (PMTCT) (R01)

The NIH, in collaboration with the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, invites applications for implementation science projects that will inform the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as they develop more efficient and cost-effective methods to deliver proven interventions for prevention of maternal-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) in PEPFAR priority countries.  In Southeast Asia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia are PEPFAR priority countries.


Globally, over 1,000 children are newly infected with HIV each day, the majority in sub-Saharan Africa; the primary mode of HIV acquisition for infants is through mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) during pregnancy, childbirth or breastfeeding.


Research topics may include:
      1.) Optimal ways to enhance identification of HIV-infected pregnant women
      2.) Community-based strategies effectively increase preventative MTCT (PMTCT) uptake and reduce stigma, 
      3.) Does family and male partner involvement to increase PMTCT uptake and successful completion of the cascade and how can family and male partner involvement in PMTCT be increased? 
      4.) In a variety of settings (urban, rural), what are barriers to and effective strategies for providing more complex antiretroviral prophylaxis regimens to HIV-infected women who do not qualify for ART at the present time?
      5.) What strategies are needed to optimize nutrition for the HIV-exposed infants and for their HIV-infected breastfeeding mothers?


There are many other examples of research topics.  Please visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-HD-12-210.html for more information.


The deadline is 28 February 2012, but a letter of intent is due by 28 January 2012.  This grant is worth 1,000,000 USD over two years.

Gates Foundation: Grand Challenges Exploration Round #8

The Gates Foundation released the topics for its newest call for applications:
http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/TopicsOverview.aspx
There are 5 topics, although 2 are particularly interesting for TropMed:


1.)Design New Approaches to Optimize Immunization Systems
This topic aims to generate novel approaches to optimizing the performance of immunization logistics and supply systems in low-resource settings. Applicants are encouraged to re-examine the systems trusted with delivering vaccines and design innovative solutions to optimize the performance of these systems, both today and in the future. We seek proposals that are responsive to the topic that are daring in premise and clearly different from the approaches currently under investigation or employed. The solutions submitted to this topic must be focused on the operational aspects of immunization systems in countries, and must have the potential to be scaled up or reproduced in multiple settings.
http://www.grandchallenges.org/ImproveVaccines/Topics/Pages/OptimizeImmunizationSystemsRound8.aspx


2.) Explore Nutrition for Healthy Growth of Infants and Children
The goal of this topic is to solicit new scientific understanding and new science-based preventative and therapeutic approaches to improve nutrition and promote the healthy growth and development of infants and young children. We strongly encourage investigating the mechanisms of action of nutritional deficiencies and interventions, since this will provide the basis for new strategies to promote healthy growth and will facilitate developing tests to measure nutritional status and to measure treatment outcomes, including discriminating responders from non-responders in population studies.
http://www.grandchallenges.org/ImproveNutrition/Topics/Pages/NutritionforInfantsandChildrenRound8.aspx

The deadline for all responses to the Grand Challenges Exploration Round #8 are 17 November 2011.

NIH Research Project Grant (Parent R01)

The Research Project Grant (R01) is an award made to an institution/organization to support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in areas representing the specific interests and competencies of the investigator(s). The R01 research plan proposed by the applicant institution/organization must be related to the stated program interests of one or more of the NIH Institutes and Centers (ICs) based on descriptions of their programs (contact the Faculty of Tropical Medicine Office of Research Services for assistance identifying which IC to apply to).


For more information, see:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-11-260.html


The funding is for 3-5 years and the budget depends on the scope of the project.


The next deadline is 5 October 2011.  There are regular deadlines every February, October, and June

NIH Research to Advance Vaccine Safety (R01 or R21)

The grant supports research that will contribute to the overall understanding of vaccine safety. This research opportunity invites studies that address scientific areas potentially relevant to vaccine safety such as: 
1) physiological and immunological responses to vaccines and vaccine components,
2) how genetic variations affect immune/physiological responses that may impact vaccine safety, 
3) identification of risk factors and biological markers that may be used to assess whether there is a relationship between certain diseases or disorders and licensed vaccines, or 
4) the application of genomic/molecular technologies to improve knowledge of vaccine safety


This grant is available in both the R01 and R21 scheme.  See more information here:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-08-256.html (R01)
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-08-257.html (R21)
R01 = more money, but requires extensive preliminary research and expertise
R21 = less money, more exploratory and "risky" research


The deadline for this application is 8 January 2012.  The R01 is for up to 5 years of funding, with no formal budget limit.  The R21 is worth $275,000 over 2 years.

NIH Host-Targeted Interventions as Therapeutics for Infectious Diseases (R21/R33)

Applications focused on discovery and development of a therapeutic that targets a host-encoded function required for infection by one or more NIAID Category A, B, or C priority pathogens are invited.  Eligible pathogens include dengue, Brucella melitensis, Rickettsia spp., Japanese encephalitis, Giardia lamblia, Toxoplasma gondii, Chikungunya virus, and others  (For a complete list of Category A, B, & C pathogens, see http://pathema.jcvi.org/pathema/AbcGenomes.shtml)


Activities may include, but are not limited to:

• Identification and validation of new host targets for drug discovery;
• Development of new and improved target identification technologies;
• Screening for candidate therapeutics;
• Molecular modeling, library screening, and medicinal chemistry/structural activity analysis to optimize candidate compounds for preclinical studies;
• Preclinical characterization of candidate therapeutics, including toxicity and efficacy in in vitro or in vivo models;
• Performing reiterative design, chemical synthesis and in vitro analysis to develop a "mature" lead compound; and
• Synthesis of sufficient quantities of a lead compound(s) for preclinical characterization.

This grant is worth a total of $1,175,000 over 5 years.  The deadline to submit a Letter of Intent is 31 October 2011.  The application deadline is 30 November 2011.

For more information, see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-11-032.html

NIH Exploratory Developmental Research Grant Program (Parent R21)

The R21 mechanism is intended to encourage new exploratory and developmental research projects. 


For example, such projects could assess the feasibility of a novel area of investigation or a new experimental system that has the potential to enhance health-related research.  Another example could include the unique and innovative use of an existing methodology to explore a new scientific area. These studies may involve considerable risk but may lead to a breakthrough in a particular area, or to the development of novel techniques, agents, methodologies, models, or applications that could have a major impact on a field of biomedical, behavioral, or clinical research.


This grant is worth $275,000 over 2 years.  The nearest deadline is 14 October.


For more information, see: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-10-069.html

NIH Biomarkers of Infection-Associated Cancers (Exploratory R21)

This grant seeks applications that propose to identify biomarkers for cancers where the cause of the disease is attributed to infectious agents.


Specifically projects that look at either:
1.) Molecular profiles of normal, precancerous, and cancerous lesions following infection and of body fluids from infected individuals.
-or-
2) Evaluating these molecular profiles for use in gaining a better understanding of the role of infectious agents in cancer development and use in early detection, risk assessment, and prevention of cancer


For more information, see: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-11-159.html


This grant opportunity has regular submission deadlines every October, February, and May.  The grant is worth $275,000 over two years.

International Society for Infectious Disease Small Grants

The Small Grants Program is designed to fund pilot research projects by young investigators in developing countries. The goal is to support and foster the professional development of young individuals (less than 40 years of age) in the field of infectious diseases research by helping them to acquire additional skills and data to apply for other grants. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to investigations of the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis or treatment of infectious diseases, the epidemiology and control of hospital-acquired infections, and modeling of cost effective interventions.
Up to five grants of up to US $6,000 each will be awarded annually.  The nearest deadline is October 1


Click here for more information: http://www.isid.org/grants/grants_small.shtml

NSF/NIH Ecology of Infectious Diseases Initiative (EID)

This joint program between the NIH and NSF supports the development of predictive models and the discovery of principles governing the transmission dynamics of infectious disease agents. 


To that end, research proposals should focus on: 
-understanding the ecological, evolutionary and socio-ecological determinants of transmission by vectors or abiotic agents; 
-the population dynamics and genetics of reservoir species; 
-the transmission to humans, other non-human animals or plants; 
-or the cultural, social, behavioral, and economic dimensions of disease communication. 


Research may be on zoonotic, vector-borne or enteric diseases of either terrestrial, freshwater, or marine systems and organisms, including diseases of non-human animals and plants, at any scale from specific pathogens to inclusive environmental systems. 


Diseases affecting humans must have an environmental transmission component; research on solely human-to-human transmitted disease systems are not eligible for EID support. 


Proposals for research on disease systems of public health concern to developing countries are strongly encouraged, as are disease systems of agricultural concern. Investigators are encouraged to include links to the public health research community, including for example, participation of epidemiologists, physicians, veterinarians, social scientists, medical entomologists, pathologists, virologists, or parasitologists.


For more information, see the link:
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10616/nsf10616.htm


The award amount is for $2.5 million over 5 years.  The deadline is 14 December 2012.

NIH NIAID Clinical Trial Implementation Cooperative Agreement (U01)

This opportunity invites applications that propose implementation of investigator-initiated high-risk clinical trials. The trials must be hypothesis-driven, related to the research mission of the NIAID and considered a high priority by the Institute.

A high-risk clinical trial is defined by the NIAID as having one or more of the following attributes:

• provision of a non-routine intervention, that is, an intervention or non-routine use of an intervention that would not otherwise be provided for the condition under study in the local facility where the study is being conducted;
• administration of an unlicensed product; or
• administration of a licensed product for an unapproved indication.

Please see the link for more details:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-11-234.html

The application due date is 13 September 2011.

Budgets are not limited, but must be realistic.

Defense Medical Research and Development Program - Military Infectious Diseases Clinical Trial Award

The Defense Health Program (Defense Medical Research and Development) has assigned funds to support clinical trials focused on combat-related infectious diseases. This Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity, DMRDP Military Infectious Diseases Clinical Trial Award (MID-CTA), is soliciting proposals focused on wound infection prevention and management as well as antimicrobial countermeasures. The FY12 MID-CTA seeks applications focused on reduction of morbidity and mortality of wound infections in wounded warriors and specifically seeks to accelerate transition of (1) medical technologies into deployed products and (2) advances in knowledge to improve clinical practices for use in the theater of war or in the clinical facilities of the Military Health System (MHS).

Proposed projects should be designed to demonstrate (1) the utility of a novel biomarker/assay, and/or (2) the safety and efficacy of novel therapies in human patients suffering from serious, debilitating wound infections due to trauma. The purpose of such demonstrations is to accelerate translation of greater medical capabilities to patients; this can range from proof of concept (i.e., first in human) trials through Phase II clinical trials, as well as Class I, II, or III medical device trials/testing.

Projects of interest are those focused on testing and translating investigational interventions/devices already proven in relevant definitive animal models, moving them into advanced clinical development.

Please see the link for more details
https://cdmrp.org/files/2012/dmrdp/midcta_pa.pdf

This grant opportunity is worth a maximum of 2,500,000 USD over 3 years


The application deadline is 7 September 2011.

NIH Promoting Engagement in Care and Timely Antiretroviral Initiation Following HIV Diagnosis (R01)

This program seeks research to improve medical care engagement and treatment adherence among HIV infected individuals in the first twelve months following HIV diagnosis, enrollment in HIV primary care, or initiation of antiretroviral treatment (ART). 


Please see the following link for more information:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAS-10-148.html


Budgets are open and not limited, but must be realistic. The time period can be 1-5 years.

Research topics that are appropriate to this FOA include, but are not limited to:  

• Conduct formative research to develop and test interventions for rapidly and effectively linking individuals diagnosed with HIV to primary medical care, including but not limited to interventions that can be directly integrated within post-test HIV counseling, outreach efforts, peer-navigation programs, treatment for mental illness and substance abuse, and contingency management approaches.
• Evaluate policies and test interventions that seek to enhance enrollment in primary HIV medical care and reduce the time between HIV diagnosis and initial medical evaluation for recently diagnosed individuals, and/or time to achievement of first undetectable viral load among those for whom ART is indicated.
• Develop and test novel interventions focused on enhancing and maintaining patient retention in primary medical care, particularly within the first year following initiation of HIV care.
• Develop, refine, and validate systematic approaches toward assessing and improving patient readiness to initiate antiretroviral treatment that could be implemented in clinical practice in accordance with treatment guidelines and recommendations, such as measurement tools, placebo practice trials, or other approaches.
• Develop and test the impact of interventions designed to help patients make informed choices about voluntary ART initiation of antiretroviral medications, when clinically indicated.
• Develop and test highly feasible and low-cost clinic- or community-based interventions to improve patient adherence and persistence to antiretroviral medications in the period following ART initiation. Adherence intervention trials should assess impact on both behavioral adherence and biological outcomes such as viral suppression.
• Develop and test interventions to improve provider communication skills and messaging to patients (and patient-provider communication more generally) regarding ART initiation and early ART adherence and persistence.
• Assess organizational and systems-level factors or approaches that may impact linkage to HIV care, patient retention, antiretroviral initiation, or antiretroviral adherence to inform policy and clinic practice.
• Develop and test targeted interventions designed to reduce documented racial/ethnic, gender, and age-related disparities in HIV care engagement and treatment outcomes.

The application deadline is 9 September 2011.

Gates Foundation: Open Letters of Inquiry

The Gates Foundation regularly accepts Letters of Inquiry (LOI) that propose projects that investigate malaria, nutrition, and/or neglected diseases. Some of the things they will consider:

• Improve diagnostics so that diseases can be detected early.
• Develop vaccines and drug treatments that are safe, effective, and affordable.
• Control the source of the disease.
• Attempt to eliminate or eradicate some diseases entirely.
• Advocate for public support to address these neglected diseases.

Please see the following link for more details:

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/grantseeker/Pages/grant-opportunities.aspx

Grant budgets are open-ended (but must be reasonable) and there is no specific deadline.

NIH Strategies for the Protection of Pregnant Women and Infants Against Infectious Diseases (R01)

This grant opportunity proposes that infectious diseases are studied in pregnant women, infants, and unborn fetuses.  

This grant is worth $350,000 per year for up to 5 years.

Studies looking at any infectious disease (except HIV/AIDS) are welcome, although some diseases of specific interest are: human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), adenoviruses, human papillomaviruses (HPV), Toxoplasma gondii, and falciparum malaria.

Applicants should propose hypothesis-driven specific aims that directly address one or more of the three major areas below.

• Mechanisms of pathogen-mediated placental pathology and/or dysfunction.
• Mechanisms of trans-placental transmission of pathogens and their components.
• Mechanisms of pathogen-mediated pregnancy loss and pre-term delivery.

Applicants are highly encouraged to use, where appropriate, an approach that incorporates human subjects and human tissues.

Please see the following link for more information: 

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-11-036.html

The deadline is 13 October 2011

NIH Therapeutics for Neurotropic Biodefense Toxins and Pathogens (R21/R33)

This NIH grants seeks studies addressing pathogens such as rabies and Japanese encephalitis virus in the following focus areas:

• development of improved neurotropic therapeutic delivery technologies;
• development or optimization of candidate therapeutic delivery platforms;
• identification and validation of new therapeutic targets such as receptors that enable toxins or pathogens to cross the blood-brain barrier or enter neurons;
• research utilizing genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and/or bioinformatics to identify therapeutic targets;
• screening and identification of new therapeutic agents directed against neurotropic toxins or pathogens;
• preclinical efficacy and/or toxicity testing of candidate therapeutics; and lead candidate optimization.

Responsive applications must address discovery and/or development of new therapeutics against one or more of the following neurotropic agents.

This grant is worth $275,000 over the first two years, and then $300,000 per year for three additional years.

Please see the following link for more information:
http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-11-027.html


The deadline is 24 October 2011

Introduction

This blog is facilitated by the Office of Research Services at the Mahidol University Faculty of Tropical Medicine. We will constantly update you on funding opportunities we believe TropMed staff are eligible for, as well as remind you of deadlines, and other news. Please subscribe by submitting you email address under the "Follow by email" heading, and you can receive updates through your email address.