Group items tagged

The Biological Anthropology Program supports basic research in areas related to human evolution and contemporary human biological variation. Research areas supported by the program include, but are not limited to, human genetic variation, human adaptation, human osteology and bone biology, human and nonhuman primate paleontology, functional anatomy, and primate socioecology. Grants supported in these areas are united by an underlying evolutionary framework, and often a consideration of adaptation as a central theoretical theme. Many proposals also have a biocultural orientation. The program frequently serves as a bridge within NSF between the social and behavioral sciences and the natural and physical sciences, and proposals are commonly jointly reviewed and funded with other programs.

The Biological Anthropology Program supports basic research in areas related to human evolution and contemporary human biological variation. Research areas supported by the program include, but are not limited to, human genetic variation, human adaptation, human osteology and bone biology, human and nonhuman primate paleontology, functional anatomy, and primate socioecology. Grants supported in these areas are united by an underlying evolutionary framework, and often a consideration of adaptation as a central theoretical theme. Many proposals also have a biocultural orientation. The program frequently serves as a bridge within NSF between the social and behavioral sciences and the natural and physical sciences, and proposals are commonly jointly reviewed and funded with other programs.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites cooperative agreement applications that will contribute to a higher resolution understanding of the physical and functional organization of the human islet tissue environment by describing the composition (cellular and molecular) and function of important components of the pancreatic islet and peri-islet tissue architecture, the cell-cell relationships and means of communications used by cell types and cell subtypes within the pancreatic tissue ecosystem, and/or the contribution of adjacent (including acinar, ductal, lymphatic) and neighboring (intestinal, mesenteric and adipose) tissues to islet cell function and dysfunction. Successful projects will integrate the Human Pancreas Analysis Consortium (HPAC), that will consist of the research teams funded in response to this FOA with the Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP), a resource-generation program that was funded in 2016 in response to RFA-DK-15-027. HPAC will become the fifth consortium of the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN, https://hirnetwork.org/ ). HIRN's overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans. This FOA will only support studies with a primary focus on increasing our understanding of human tissue structure and function, and human disease biology (as opposed to rodent or other animal models). This FOA is not intended to support the conduct of a clinical trial.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites cooperative agreement applications that will contribute to a higher resolution understanding of the physical and functional organization of the human islet tissue environment by describing the composition (cellular and molecular) and function of important components of the pancreatic islet and peri-islet tissue architecture, the cell-cell relationships and means of communications used by cell types and cell subtypes within the pancreatic tissue ecosystem, and/or the contribution of adjacent (including acinar, ductal, lymphatic) and neighboring (intestinal, mesenteric and adipose) tissues to islet cell function and dysfunction. Successful projects will integrate the Human Pancreas Analysis Consortium (HPAC), that will consist of the research teams funded in response to this FOA with the Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP), a resource-generation program that was funded in 2016 in response to RFA-DK-15-027. HPAC will become the fifth consortium of the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN, https://hirnetwork.org/ ). HIRN's overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans. This FOA will only support studies with a primary focus on increasing our understanding of human tissue structure and function, and human disease biology (as opposed to rodent or other animal models). This FOA will not accept applications proposing a clinical trial.

This FOA invites new applications to participate in the Human Islet Research Network-Consortium on Human Islet Biomimetics (HIRN-CHIB). NIDDK will support the development of a microphysiological system (MPS) that allows the study of interactions between primary human islets or assembled islet spheroids (organoids made up of human beta/alpha/delta/other cells) and immune cells within a 3D microenvironment to mimic aspects of the autoimmune process and its regulation. The ultimate goal will be to create an in vitro human disease model(s) that could recapitulate some aspects of the complex pathophysiology of Type 1 diabetes (T1D), by using T1D patient-derived islets (created using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) combined with autologous immune components. CHIB is already part of HIRN, whose overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans.

The Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program supports interdisciplinary research that examines human and natural system processes and the complex interactions among human and natural systems at diverse scales. Research projects to be supported by CNH must include analyses of four different components: (1) the dynamics of a natural system; (2) the dynamics of a human system; (3) the processes through which the natural system affects the human system; and (4) the processes through which the human system affects the natural system. CNH also supports research coordination networks (CNH-RCNs) designed to facilitate activities that promote future research by broad research communities that will include all four components necessary for CNH funding.

On September 13, WBI will be hosting its 3rd OEA Collider Event, this time on the topic of Human Performance Enhancement. Please block your calendars from 1:30 till 3:30 and plan to join us to learn more about the opportunities within this massive market space. For the purposes of this project, we're defining Human Performance Enhancement like this: As the world becomes more complex, the demands on human performance continue to increase. Athletic endeavors, military requirements, continuing independence into one's later years are all examples of market-driven needs for human performance enhancement. Strength, speed, endurance, vigilance, multi-tasking, mental-acuity, and recovery are all enhancement opportunities of interest. Formal evaluation of blue papers will begin on approximately 17 October 2016. Wright Brothers Institute continues to work diligently on our pilot project to refine a commercialization process for regional innovators. In March we had an OEA Collider event focused on the Precision Agriculture market which has resulted in 8 Blue Paper submissions and 2 on-going projects to commercialize several of the concepts explained in those blue papers. We're making significant progress toward providing real market solutions with a combination of several innovative technologies!

On September 13, WBI will be hosting its 3rd OEA Collider Event, this time on the topic of Human Performance Enhancement. Please block your calendars from 1:30 till 3:30 and plan to join us to learn more about the opportunities within this massive market space. For the purposes of this project, we're defining Human Performance Enhancement like this: As the world becomes more complex, the demands on human performance continue to increase. Athletic endeavors, military requirements, continuing independence into one's later years are all examples of market-driven needs for human performance enhancement. Strength, speed, endurance, vigilance, multi-tasking, mental-acuity, and recovery are all enhancement opportunities of interest. Formal evaluation of blue papers will begin on approximately 17 October 2016. Wright Brothers Institute continues to work diligently on our pilot project to refine a commercialization process for regional innovators. In March we had an OEA Collider event focused on the Precision Agriculture market which has resulted in 8 Blue Paper submissions and 2 on-going projects to commercialize several of the concepts explained in those blue papers. We're making significant progress toward providing real market solutions with a combination of several innovative technologies!

The overall objective of the LungMAP is to better understand human lung development by building an open-access reference resource of a comprehensive, dynamic, 3-D molecular atlas of the late-stage developing human lung with data and reagents available to the research community. Phase 1 of the LungMAP has generated foundational data from developing mouse and human lungs, created a web portal for public data sharing, and established a repository of human lung tissues. Phase 2 of the LungMAP will continue to generate and integrate high-resolution, multiscale molecular profiles associated with spatial information to provide molecular characterizations of functionally and anatomically defined cell types in the developing human lung. Phase 2 of LungMAP will focus on human lung only and will extend the scope to cover normal lung development into early adulthood (up to 25 years old), as well as abnormal lung development in selected neonatal and pediatric rare lung diseases.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) requests applications to explore human pancreatic tissues for the discovery of early biomarkers of T1D pathogenesis, the description of specific signaling or processing pathways that may contribute to the asymptomatic phase of T1D, the development of clinical diagnostic tools for the detection and staging of early T1D in at-risk or recently-diagnosed individuals, and/or the identification of therapeutic targets for the development of preventative or early treatment strategies. Successful applicants will join the Consortium on Beta Cell Death and Survival (CBDS), whose mission is to better define and detect the mechanisms of beta cell stress and destruction central to the development of T1D in humans, with the long-term goal of detecting beta cell destruction and protecting the residual beta cell mass in T1D patients as early as possible in the disease process, and of preventing the progression to autoimmunity. The CBDS is part of a collaborative research framework, the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN, https://hirnetwork.org), whose overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans. This FOA will only support studies with a primary focus on increasing our understanding of human disease biology (as opposed to rodent or other animal models).

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) requests applications to explore human pancreatic tissues for the discovery of early biomarkers of T1D pathogenesis, the description of specific signaling or processing pathways that may contribute to the asymptomatic phase of T1D, the development of clinical diagnostic tools for the detection and staging of early T1D in at-risk or recently-diagnosed individuals, and/or the identification of therapeutic targets for the development of preventative or early treatment strategies. Successful applicants will join the Consortium on Beta Cell Death and Survival (CBDS), whose mission is to better define and detect the mechanisms of beta cell stress and destruction central to the development of T1D in humans, with the long-term goal of detecting beta cell destruction and protecting the residual beta cell mass in T1D patients as early as possible in the disease process, and of preventing the progression to autoimmunity. The CBDS is part of a collaborative research framework, the Human Islet Research Network (HIRN, https://hirnetwork.org), whose overall mission is to support innovative and collaborative translational research to understand how human beta cells are lost in T1D, and to find innovative strategies to protect and replace functional beta cell mass in humans. This FOA will only support studies with a primary focus on increasing our understanding of human disease biology (as opposed to rodent or other animal models). This FOA will not accept applications proposing a clinical trial.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) invites research projects that seek to explain the underlying mechanisms, processes, and trajectories of social relationships and how these factors affect outcomes in human health, illness, recovery, and overall wellbeing. Types of projects submitted under this FOA include studies that prospectively assign human participants to conditions (i.e., experimentally manipulate independent variables) and that assess biomedical and/or behavioral outcomes in humans to understand fundamental aspects of phenomena related to social connectedness and isolatedness. NIH considers such studies as "prospective basic science studies involving human participants" that meet the NIH definition of basic research and fall within the NIH definition of a clinical trials (see, e.g., NOT-OD-19-024) Types of studies that should submit under this FOA include studies that prospectively assign human participants to conditions (i.e., experimentally manipulate independent variables) and that assess biomedical or behavioral outcomes in humans for the purpose of understanding the fundamental aspects of phenomena without specific application towards processes or products in mind.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit applications to continue the Cooperative Centers on Human Immunology (CCHI) program to support studies that will advance understanding of the mechanisms regulating human immune responses. The immediate objective of CCHI is to support mechanistic and hypothesis-testing studies to understand human immunity applicable to the biodefense effort; i.e. innate, adaptive and mucosal immune responses to infection, vaccination and adjuvants. Studies on immune-mediated diseases (e.g. airway allergy, food allergy, autoimmunity, organ transplant rejection) are also of interest, as these data will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the human immune system. The program will also support the centralized infrastructure needed to promote and coordinate multi-disciplinary research in human immunology. Additional objectives are to promote public access to CCHI-supported data and metadata through public portals such as ImmPort, and to develop new technologies to support human immunology research.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit transformative technologies that will significantly expand throughput, multiplexing and discrimination of biomolecules in human tissues for comprehensive mapping of individual cells and their context in human tissues. This FOA supports the accelerated proof-of-principle demonstration and validation of promising tools, techniques and systems that can be integrated, scaled and applied to multiple human tissues. The initial two-year UG3 phase will support accelerated development and demonstration of feasibility of these emerging, high impact technologies. The subsequent two-year UH3 phase will support validation in human tissues, optimization, scale-up, and generation of data. Funded projects will be expected to work closely as part of the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program to catalyze development of a framework for mapping the human body with high resolution.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit transformative technologies that will significantly expand throughput, multiplexing and discrimination of biomolecules in human tissues for comprehensive mapping of individual cells and their context in human tissues. This FOA supports the accelerated proof-of-principle demonstration and validation of promising tools, techniques and systems that can be integrated, scaled and applied to multiple human tissues. The initial two-year UG3 phase will support accelerated development and demonstration of feasibility of these emerging, high impact technologies. The subsequent two-year UH3 phase will support validation in human tissues, optimization, scale-up, and generation of data. Funded projects will be expected to work closely as part of the Human BioMolecular Atlas Program to catalyze development of a framework for mapping the human body with high resolution.

The HRP contains six Elements: Space Radiation, Human Health and Countermeasures, Exploration Medical Capability, Behavioral Health and Performance, Space Human Factors and Habitability, and International Space Station Medical Project. Fourteen disciplines or areas support the Program: Behavioral Health and Performance, Bone, Cardiovascular, Extravehicular Activity, Immunology, Medical Capabilities, Muscle, Nutrition, Pharmacology, Radiation, Sensorimotor, Advanced Food Technology, Advanced Environmental Health, and Space Human Factors Engineering. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) is a non-profit organization competitively selected by NASA that uses an integrated team approach to advance biomedical research and countermeasure development. NSBRI works in close partnership with the HRP through a Cooperative Agreement. The NRA will cover all aspects of research to provide human health and performance countermeasures, knowledge, technologies, and tools to enable safe, reliable, and productive human space exploration, and to ensure safe and productive human spaceflight. Awards generally range from under $100K per year for focused, limited efforts (e.g., data analysis) to $450K per year for extensive activities (e.g., development of scientific hardware). The funds available for awards in each program element offered in the NRA range from less than one to several million dollars, which allow selection from a few to as many as a dozen proposals depending on the program objectives and the submission of proposals of merit. Awards will be made as grants. The period of performance for an award will be one to five years. Any changes or modifications to any of these guidelines will be specified in the descriptions of the relevant program elements in the solicited research response area appendices of this solicitation. 

The purpose of this Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative funding opportunity announcement is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis and manipulation of complex circuits in large brains. Critical advances in the treatment of brain disorders in human populations are hindered by our lack of ability to monitor and manipulate circuitry in safe, minimally-invasive ways. Clinical intervention with novel cell and circuit specific tools will require extensive focused research designed to remove barriers to delivery of gene therapies. In addition to identification and removal of barriers, the need to specifically target dysfunctional circuitry poses additional challenges. Neuroscience has experienced an impressive influx of exciting new research tools in the past decade, especially since the launch of the BRAIN Initiative. However, the majority of these cutting-edge tools have been developed for use in model organisms, primarily rodents, fish and flies. These cutting-edge tools, such as viral delivery of genetic constructs, are increasingly adaptable to larger mammalian brains and more importantly are emerging as potential human therapeutic strategies for brain disorders. A pressing need to develop tools for use in large brains or those that are more directly relevant to the human brain is the focus of this initiative. The initiative will support initial proof of principle studies aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of this approach in humans and other mammalian species (non-human primate [NHP]/sheep/pigs).

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) seeks applications for the production of High Quality Human Reference Genomes (HQRG) as a component of the NHGRI Human Genome Reference Program (HGRP). One aim of the HGRP is to develop a genome reference that is representative of human population genetic diversity. To help achieve this goal, this HQRG initiative is expected to establish metrics for high quality-genome assemblies; collaborate with other HGRC awardees on sample selection and prioritization; produce on the order of 350 high quality haplotype-resolved human genomes, using diverse samples consented for full data release; and provide capacity to help resolve error reports received by the HGRC.

The Human Cell Atlas (HCA) is a global effort to create a reference map of all cell types in the human body. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the Helmsley Charitable Trust are pleased to announce continued support for the Human Cell Atlas by collaborating on two new funding mechanisms that the community can access through a single application portal. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative seeks to continue the work of the HCA community with a focus on interdisciplinary work and collaboration through the formation of 3 year Seed Networks. The Helmsley Charitable Trust welcomes applications that will construct a detailed atlas of the human gut. Project Specifications This Request for Applications (RFA) seeks to support the continued growth of nascent projects and to incubate new networks. The Seed Networks should generate new tools, open source analysis methods, and significant contributions of diverse data types to the Human Cell Atlas Data Coordination Platform. Applications should have a primary focus on the healthy tissues that will contribute to a reference atlas. Seed Networks Seed Networks should consist of at least three principal investigators, including at least one computational biologist or software engineer, together with additional computational biologists, engineers, experimental biologists, and/or physicians. CZI Seed Networks aim to support foundational tools and resources for the HCA and will not require a gut component in the application. CZI Seed Network Grants have four overarching scientific goals: - Build and support networks of collaborating scientists and engineers; - Contribution of high-quality data to v1.0 of the HCA; - Development of new technologies and benchmark data sets, particularly those anchored in spatial as well as molecular information; - Support of computational biology within the Human Cell Atlas community.

We are looking for ideas that can lead to new multi-grant research portfolios on human flourishing. We are particularly interested in ideas for interdisciplinary scientific research towards discoveries that can promote physical, mental, social, and spiritual well-being. We welcome ideas that bridge gaps between empirical science and the humanities. Such ideas may include (but are not limited to):  Experimental testing of philosophically grounded models of human flourishing; Research on biological complexity in humans, including genetics, epigenetics, and microbiome research; Investigation of key psychological, neuroscientific, or human developmental concepts, such as (but not limited to) altruism, creativity, imagination, narrative, and meta-cognition; Research on cognitive, affective, or social capacities of individuals or groups; Studies of human biological or cultural evolution.

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute invites cooperative agreement (U01) applications to serve as the Research Center (RC) for the Molecular Atlas of Lung Development Program (LungMAP), Phase 2. The overall objective of LungMAP is to better understand human lung development through building an open-access reference resource of a comprehensive, dynamic, 3-D molecular atlas of the late-stage developing human lung with data and reagents available to the research community. Phase 2 of LungMAP will continue to generate and integrate high-resolution, multiscale molecular profiles associated with spatial information to provide molecular characterizations of functionally and anatomically defined cell types in the developing human lung. Phase 2 of LungMAP will focus on human lung only and will extend the scope to cover normal lung development into early adulthood (up to 25 years old), as well as abnormal lung development in selected neonatal and pediatric rare lung diseases. The purpose of the LungMAP RCs will be to generate the molecular profiling data of the developing human lung. Applicants are not required to have been funded in Phase 1 (RFA-HL-14-008) in order to submit applications for Phase 2.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications to develop valid markers to assess the activity of fundamental aging mechanisms in humans that may influence the risk and progression of multiple aging conditions. Projects are encouraged that focus on selected mechanism(s) that may regulate aging changes, assess multiple possible markers for these mechanisms, test methods to improve their measurement properties, characterize their variability among individuals of differing ages and within the same age cohort, and assess their relationships in humans to in vivo functions influenced by the mechanism(s) under study. It is strongly encouraged that each project includes an interdisciplinary research team with expertise, as needed, in the biology of their selected mechanism(s), biomedical aging research, clinical pathology including laboratory assays, imaging methods, human cohort studies, tissue banking, biorepository resources, and statistics. Though the principal focus of the initiative is on development of markers in humans, studies in laboratory animals may also be conducted when necessary for the development of human markers, and potential development of parallel laboratory animal markers of a given mechanism.