NIH Partnerships for Interventions to Treat Chronic, Persistent and Latent Infections (R21/R33)

This grant opportunity seeks to stimulate basic and early-stage translational research focused on development of novel intervention strategies to clear persistent, chronic or latent infectious agents from the host. Responsive applications will define and address a therapeutic need specific to a targeted pathogen.    

Examples of possible intervention strategies include, but are not limited to:

• Targeting pathogen latency establishment and/or maintenance mechanisms;
• Targeting mechanisms enabling pathogen evasion of host immune responses;
• Enhancing pathogen susceptibility to existing interventions;
• Modulation of pathogen-specific immune cells;
• Restoration and/or enhancement of specific aspects of the immune system
• Targeting of specific metabolic sub-populations responsible for chronic infections
• Eliminating replication competent viral nucleic acids from infected cells

The grant is worth $275,000 for the first two years, and then an additional $300,000 per year for three years for a total of $1,175,000.

A letter of intent must be submitted by June 13, 2012.  The full application should be submitted by July 13, 2012.

For more information, see http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-12-020.html