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Morton Cure Paralysis Fund (MCPF) is committed to developing effective therapies (cures) for paralysis associated with spinal cord injury and other disorders of the central nervous system (CNS).  MCPF funds activities that hold promise of identifying therapies (cures) for paralysis in humans. MCPF has particular focus of placing projects in the research pipeline that is, enabling scientists to develop the proof concept data necessary to apply for larger NIH grants. MCPF has particular focus of placing projects in the research pipeline that is, enabling scientists to develop the proof concept data necessary to apply for larger NIH grants. The development of effective therapies for chronic injury is a high priority for the organization. Basic research will be supported if it has clear potential to accelerate progress at the applied end of the continuum and/or if it reflects innovative research or a 'change of direction.

Morton Cure Paralysis Fund (MCPF) is committed to developing effective therapies (cures) for paralysis associated with spinal cord injury and other disorders of the central nervous system (CNS).  MCPF funds activities that hold promise of identifying therapies (cures) for paralysis in humans. MCPF has particular focus of placing projects in the research pipeline that is, enabling scientists to develop the proof concept data necessary to apply for larger NIH grants. MCPF has particular focus of placing projects in the research pipeline that is, enabling scientists to develop the proof concept data necessary to apply for larger NIH grants. The development of effective therapies for chronic injury is a high priority for the organization. Basic research will be supported if it has clear potential to accelerate progress at the applied end of the continuum and/or if it reflects innovative research or a 'change of direction.

In recent years, somatic cells as therapeutic agents have provided new treatment approaches for a number of pathological conditions that were deemed untreatable, or difficult to treat. Several successful cell therapies using T cells have been demonstrated for cancer and autoimmune diseases, while stem cell therapies have given relief for heart disease and stroke. Hundreds of clinical trials are ongoing to examine efficacy of cell therapies for a variety of other diseases including diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Crohn's disease. Production of therapeutic cells is currently expensive and, therefore, cost prohibitive for the large number of people who might benefit from these treatments. The overarching goal of this Advanced Biomanufacturing of Therapeutic Cells (ABTC) solicitation is to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary research to understand, design, and control cell manufacturing systems and processes that will enable reproducible, cost-effective, and high-quality production of cells with predictable performance for the identified therapeutic function.

In recent years, somatic cells as therapeutic agents have provided new treatment approaches for a number of pathological conditions that were deemed untreatable, or difficult to treat. Several successful cell therapies using T cells have been demonstrated for cancer and autoimmune diseases, while stem cell therapies have given relief for heart disease and stroke. Hundreds of clinical trials are ongoing to examine efficacy of cell therapies for a variety of other diseases including diabetes, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Crohn's disease. Production of therapeutic cells is currently expensive and, therefore, cost prohibitive for the large number of people who might benefit from these treatments. The overarching goal of this Advanced Biomanufacturing of Therapeutic Cells (ABTC) solicitation is to catalyze well-integrated interdisciplinary research to understand, design, and control cell manufacturing systems and processes that will enable reproducible, cost-effective, and high-quality production of cells with predictable performance for the identified therapeutic function.

Cell-based therapies, especially immune cells, have the potential to revolutionize human healthcare in various different contexts, including cancer and personalized medicine. For example, CAR (Chimeric antigen receptor) T-cell therapy for cancer requires modification, in vitro culture and expansion of human T-cells.   Manufacturing of therapeutic cells as the end product presents major engineering challenges.  New therapies and cell-based products depend critically on the development of robust, reliable and reproducible biomanufacturing technologies.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to promote the discovery of novel small molecules that may enhance the ability of the immune system to selectively recognize and attack cancer cells. These small molecules could be further developed into stand-alone immunotherapeutics or synergistic partners for existing therapies, or as chemical probes for the discovery and validation of novel targets involved in anti-tumor immunity. Investigators from multiple scientific disciplines (immuno-oncology, tumor biology, screening technology, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology) are encouraged to establish collaborative teams to discover and develop novel small molecule immunomodulators for cancer therapy. This FOA encourages the design of research projects that utilize the following phases of discovery research: 1) assay development specifically designed for immuno-oncology targets with the intent to screen for novel small molecule compounds that show potential as either probes or drugs, or as pre-therapeutic leads; 2) screen implementation for immunomodulatory targets to identify initial screening hits (from high throughput target-focused approaches or moderate throughput phenotypic- and fragment-based approaches); 3) hit validation through secondary orthogonal and counter screening assays, and hit prioritization; and 4) hit-to-lead optimization.

GSK is seeking rapid, point of care analytical tests for gene therapy products that can go from sample to result within 2 hours   Tests should work with human cells at a concentration of 1x106 - 1x108 cells per mL in growth media. They should characterize / quantify the populations of cell immunophenotypes in the sample.   Lab tests are welcome. GSK would be especially interested in analytical techniques that could be carried out at or close to the patient's bedside.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation believes that a major hurdle in the development of promising treatments for Parkinson's disease is the need for well-validated targets linked to the disease process. By promoting critical target validation studies within academic and industry laboratories, MJFF investments can help de-risk subsequent drug development and ultimately accelerate the creation of innovative therapies for Parkinson's patients. Part of our Edmond J. Safra Core Programs for PD Research, the Target Advancement program seeks to build robust evidence to rationalize biological pathways and targets for further translation into new Parkinson's treatments.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation believes that a major hurdle in the development of promising treatments for Parkinson's disease is the need for well-validated targets linked to the disease process. By promoting critical target validation studies within academic and industry laboratories, MJFF investments can help de-risk subsequent drug development and ultimately accelerate the creation of innovative therapies for Parkinson's patients. Part of our Edmond J. Safra Core Programs for PD Research, the Target Advancement program seeks to build robust evidence to rationalize biological pathways and targets for further translation into new Parkinson's treatments.

This initiative will support research projects that implement and test comprehensive service approaches to engage and retain youth and young adults (age 12 - 25 years) from health disparity populations in the HIV Treatment Cascade, which includes diagnosis, linkage to care, engagement in care, retention in care, initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART), and achievement of viral suppression.   

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages applications from institutions/organizations that propose to develop informative outcome measures for use in clinical trials for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). This FOA will address a significant need in the field, one that is especially apparent in efforts to develop pharmacological treatments for these populations. This FOA will focus ongoing clinical and translational research on a neglected area essential for therapy and pharmacological treatment development. Potential applicants may also be interested in the FOA Preclinical Research on Model Organisms to Predict Treatment Outcomes for Disorders Associated with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (R01).

HIV-associated neurological disorders (HAND) persist in up to 50% of HIV-patients even when HIV replication is suppressed by combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), which transformed HIV/AIDS from a fatal illness into a chronically managed long-term condition. HIV does not infect neurons, but infects microglia and macrophages in the brain, causing HAND associated neuropathology. HAND epitomizes a series of disorders include Asymptomatic Neurocognitive Impairment (ANI), Mild Neurocognitive Disorder (MND), and HIV-Associated Dementia (HAD). These neurocognitive deficits interfere with psychomotor speed and coordination, diminishing memory and executive functions, and reduce quality of life in long-standing aviremic HIV-positive patients. These clinical challenges mandate research for a better understanding of HIV neuropathology; however, currently there are no effective approaches for HIV-infected live human brain studies or realistic HIV-infected animal models for HIV neuropathology. Proposed projects MUST include the following components. Applications which lack these three components will be considered non-responsive to the FOA and will not be reviewed. The major thrust of the project MUST involve exploitation of induced microglia and cerebral organoids generated from patient derived iPSC lines to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND). At least one aim or sub-aim MUST also involve either 1. opioid, cannabinoid, methamphetamine, nicotinic, dopaminergic, or other signaling pathways relevant to addictive substance use, or 2. exposure to addictive substances, or 3. analysis of samples from patients that have used addictive substances or have SUDs.

This NOFO will build on previous PEPFAR support under the HHS/CDC HIV treatment program in Côte d'Ivoire (CI) to ensure continuity of comprehensive HIV/AIDS services to an existing pool of clients receiving HIV/AIDS care, support, and/or treatment. The program will also continue expanding access to HIV/AIDS services while building the capacity of national structures and contributing to sustainable service delivery within the health sector in CI. Specifically, it serves to increase capacity and sustainability of the response toward controlling the HIV/AIDS epidemic by initially providing support for HIV service delivery aligning with PEPFAR geographic and programmatic pivots by local indigenous organizations and ultimately providing technical assistance to the national Ministry of Health and Public Hygiene (MSHP) to sustain and expand comprehensive HIV prevention, care, and antiretroviral therapy (ART) programs. The recipient(s) will combine a facility and community-based strategy to support HIV/AIDS services. At the end of the 5-year project period, the recipient(s) should be able to collect and evaluate program data that demonstrates improved quality of HIV prevention, care, and treatment services in CI and to transition activities to MSHP and/or local organizations to sustain a basic HIV service package.

The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is a collaborative framework through which 14 NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices jointly support neuroscience-related research, with the aim of accelerating discoveries and reducing the burden of nervous system disorders. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will solicit research projects to facilitate the development and translation of tools and technology for non-invasive imaging and profiling of human central nervous system (CNS, including retina) small blood and lymphatic vessels; to investigate their role in CNS physiology, disease, repair processes, and responses to therapy using novel approaches. Applications can be focused on the development of new technology and tools, novel target or biomarker identification and validation studies, or a combination of mechanistic and technology development studies specific to human CNS small blood and lymphatic vessels in health and disease, across the life span.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will support high risk and high reward basic and translational studies aimed at understanding the etiology, and the cellular and molecular mechanisms, including the environmental, genetic, epigenetic, biologic, and immunologic factors causing and/or associated with Hidradenitis Suppurativa. The purpose is to accelerate discovery in this field of research and to apply new knowledge to improve patients' condition and ultimately better control disease. This FOA intends to support a broad range of mechanistic studies using animal and human models, with an emphasis on multidisciplinary collaboration for rapid bench-to-bedside exchange of information and therapy development. This FOA is not intended to support applications proposing epidemiology studies and/or clinical trials.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support bi-phasic developmental, discovery-driven, or hypothesis-driven research focused on innovative strategies to detect HIV either within the first two weeks of infection or to monitor viral rebound after stopping or developing resistance to antiretroviral therapy. Applications should propose simple diagnostic tools that would be feasible for a self-testing platform to allow untrained individuals to detect HIV. Interdisciplinary collaborations that include biomedical, physical, and behavioral sciences are highly encouraged.

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) supports the optimization of potential therapeutic Biotechnology Products and Biologics (e.g., peptides, proteins, oligonucleotides, gene and cell therapies) for disorders identified under the NINDS mission. This track supports the further characterization and optimization of therapeutic lead(s) that showed promise as a potential therapeutic agent as evidenced by convincing animal proof-of-concept studies. Therefore, at the end of this funding period, successful projects will have delivered and optimized therapeutic candidate with demonstrated bioactivity, stability, manufacturability, bioavailability, in vivo efficacy and should be eligible for entry into the CREATE Bio Development track. The CREATE Bio Development track is a later stage program focused on the development of optimized therapeutic candidates through Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling studies and submission of an IND package to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Also Listed under (U44)

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to stimulate developmental research evaluating the effect of care planning on self-management of late effects of cancer therapy; adherence to medications, cancer screening, and health behavior guidelines; utilization of follow-up care; survivors' health and psychosocial outcomes. How organizational-level factors influence the implementation of care planning and its associated costs is also of interest. Specifically, the FOA aims to stimulate research that will: 1) develop and test metrics for evaluating the impact of survivorship care planning; 2) evaluate the impact of survivorship care planning on cancer survivors' morbidity, self-management and adherence to care recommendations, utilization of follow-up care; 3) evaluate effects of planning on systems outcomes, such as associated costs and impact on providers and organizations implementing the care planning; and 4) identify models and processes of care that promote effective survivorship care planning. The ultimate goal of this FOA is to generate a body of science that will inform the development and delivery of interventions that improve follow-up care for cancer survivors.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to stimulate research evaluating the effect of care planning on self-management of late effects of cancer therapy; adherence to medications, cancer screening, and health behavior guidelines; utilization of follow-up care; survivors' health and psychosocial outcomes. How organizational-level factors influence the implementation of care planning and its associated costs is also of interest. Specifically, the FOA aims to stimulate research that will: 1) develop and test metrics for evaluating the impact of survivorship care planning; 2) evaluate the impact of survivorship care planning on cancer survivors' morbidity, self-management and adherence to care recommendations, utilization of follow-up care; 3) evaluate effects of planning on systems outcomes, such as associated costs and impact on providers and organizations implementing the care planning; and 4) identify models and processes of care that promote effective survivorship care planning. The ultimate goal of this FOA is to generate a body of science that will inform the development and delivery of interventions that improve follow-up care for cancer survivors.

This NOFO will support achievement of national targets for 2018 antiretroviral therapy (ART) scale-up towards the UNAIDS Fast Track Targets in Ukraine. The recipient will implement innovative and effective recruitment and case management models for persons who inject drugs (PWID) and men who have sex with men (MSM) at the community level. These innovative changes will increase uptake of HIV community based testing and increase ART initiation for these populations. The recipient will pilot risk network-based testing using point-of-care recency assays to link recently infected PWID to care. The project will focus on the six regions with the highest HIV burden (Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv, Odesa, government controlled areas (GCA) of Donetsk, Kyiv City, and Kherson) and continue to work in six additional medium burden oblasts (Cherkasy, Poltava, Chernihiv, Zaporizhzhya, Kirovohrad, and Kyiv). The recipient will also increase the capacity of the Government of Ukraine’s Center for Public Health (CPH) and regional monitoring and evaluation (M&E) centers specialists to conduct data analysis using statistical software and build institutional capacity to conduct economic evaluations of HIV interventions. Illustrative strategic information (SI) activities include development of trainings to support the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the newly established CPH in using statistical software, routine analysis of surveillance data, study design, and research protocol development.

The purpose of the NLA Junior Faculty Research is to encourage scholarly advancement of Junior Faculty in the pursuit of a career related to hyperlipidemia and other lipid disorders in humans. The NLA will fund eligible institutions to provide $70,000 per year in salary support for those actively involved in clinical and/or basic science that provides promise of developing new information in fields of study that could advance the diagnosis and management of lipid disorders such as biochemistry, physiology, or genetics as well as interventions that improve therapy. The institutions eligible shall be nonprofit and offer an environment that would logically support a young faculty member with appropriate equipment, space and experienced faculty for proposed studies. The proposal will identify a specific candidate with training and strong signs of early success in an appropriate area of research and with a plan for developing appropriate experiments or clinical studies. To be eligible, an applicant is expected to hold or be eligible for a doctoral level degree (PhD, PharmD or MD) prior to the date of the scheduled award. There must be a record of accomplishment in a relevant research area as manifest by publications or a PhD thesis of high quality. The application for the Basic Science Award may focus on any aspect of lipid metabolism that has relevance to human disease. This may include experiments at the laboratory bench involving structural chemistry, biochemistry, physiology or genetics.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to accelerate the adoption and validation of molecular/cellular/imaging markers and assays for cancer detection, diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring, and prediction of response or resistance to treatment, as well as markers for cancer prevention and control. This FOA also includes the validation of pharmacodynamic markers and markers of toxicity. Applicants to this FOA must have an assay(s) whose performance has been analytically validated in specimens similar to those for the intended clinical use of the assay(s) and marker(s). As chemotherapies and/or radiation therapies are increasingly combined with immunotherapies to enhance durability of anti-cancer responses, multiple assays for measuring multiple markers, including immune markers, can be developed and validated simultaneously.

To that end, grants of up to $5 million will be awarded in support of research on innovative pharmacologic interventions for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, including clinical trials, regulatory studies for novel drugs (small molecules and biologics, including antibodies, peptides, gene therapies), repurposed drugs (existing drugs that are approved for other diseases and conditions), repositioned drugs (existing drugs that have entered clinical trials for other indications and have not yet been approved), and natural products.