Research to Advance Vaccine Safety (NIH, R01)

The purpose of this funding is to support research that will contribute to the overall understanding of vaccine safety.

This research opportunity encourages 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
4) creation/evaluation of statistical methodologies for analyzing data on vaccine safety, including data available from existing data sources such as passive reporting systems or healthcare databases
5) the application of genomic/molecular technologies and systems biology approaches to evaluate vaccine safety.

( Clinical trials will not be supported.)

Eligibility: Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions) are eligible to apply.

Budget:  Budgets are not limited but need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project.

Duration: The maximum project period is 5 years.

Deadline: October 5 2017

Full details: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-15-312.html

NIH Grant - Partnerships for Countermeasures Against Select Pathogens (R01)

This grant provides funding for milestone-driven preclinical research that will advance the development and/or production of lead therapeutics, vaccines or medical diagnostics for select Emerging Infectious Diseases/Pathogens. 

All projects must have investment by at least one industry participant. Industry means a pharmaceutical, biotechnology, bioengineering, or chemical company. 

The list of Emerging Infectious Diseases/Pathogens is here - https://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/BiodefenseRelated/Biodefense/Pages/CatA.aspx. 

The list  includes  dengue, melioidosis, diarrheagenic E.coli and chikungunya virus.

Study can be in the areas of - 

Therapeutics

Must focus on previously-identified, well-characterized, candidate leads or lead candidate series and/or targets for the following select pathogen categories:

Vaccines 

Projects must focus on development of a candidate vaccine aligned with one of the following categories:

Multivalent/Universal Vaccines

Therapeutic Vaccines

Vaccines with Small Market Potential


Diagnostics 

Proposed diagnostics must align to one of the following programmatic diagnostic priorities:

Diagnostics that Facilitate Antibacterial Stewardship

Diagnostics for Zika Virus (ZIKV)


Budget - Budgets for direct costs of up to $750,000 per year may be requested.


Duration -  The maximum project period is 5 years.


Eligibility - Foreign (non-USA) Institutions are eligible to apply.


Deadline - October 3, 2016


Full details - http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-AI-16-034.html 

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.

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 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.