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The National Institutes of Health has announced a funding opportunity for the NIH Director’s Early Independence Awards for junior investigators wishing to “skip the post-doc” and immediately begin independent research. Budgets may be up to $250,000 in direct costs per year for up to five years.

Eligible candidates must be within one year of receipt of a terminal research degree (Ph.D., etc.) or completion of clinical residency.

All areas of research relevant to the mission of NIH welcome. These are highly competitive awards but I encourage young neurofibromatosis investigators to apply given the NIH's growing interest in, and support of, rare diseases research.
The deadline for submitting Early Independence Award applications is January 30, 2012 with Letters of Intent due by December 30, 2011. See the instructions in RFA-RM-11-007. Frequently Asked Questions about the Early Independence Award Program are answered at http://commonfund.nih.gov/earlyindependence/.

Clinical trials are showing that drugs don’t always work on every person with a specific medical condition. This is most likely due to genetic differences that make some patients less responsive to specific drugs. Understanding an individual’s genetics is likely to be a key driver in future decision making on drug selection for individual patients. However, pharmaceutical companies have not yet fully embraced the practice of integrating genetic information into clinical trials, perhaps due to increased cost or the risk of introducing yet another variable into a trial. So if the pharma companies are not advancing this research, who will do this?

The answer may well rest with medical foundations like ours. Last week, the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) launched a “Personalized Medicine Initiative” – a 1,000-patient study that will track patients from multiple myeloma diagnosis through treatment, over a minimum of five years. Sequential tissue sampling will identify how a person’s molecular profile may affect his or her clinical progression and response to treatment. This is a major undertaking for a foundation, but MMRF is addressing this need as no one else is doing this type of study.  Read more in this article.

Per our 2011 NF Strategic Plan, the Children’s Tumor Foundation will launch major new neurofibromatosis initiatives in genetics/genomics in 2012 to better understand how NF can be targeted by drug therapies. The Foundation has also recently began to fund research to identify biomarkers (e.g. blood components) that can serve as a surrogate measure and early predictor of whether or not a drug is being effective in treating NF in any one person. We will be expanding our biomarkers research in 2012.

Announcing a terrific funding opportunity from the National Institutes of Health - the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Awards: 

• Exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research
• Clinical, basic, and/or behavioral/social science research projects
• Up to $25 million total costs per year for a single project
• One-third of total funding budget geared to projects with more than $1 Million in direct costs. 

 The deadline for submitting Transformative Research Project applications is January 12, 2012 with Letters of Intent due by December 12, 2011.  See the instructions in the RFA-RM-11-006.  Additional information, including Frequently Asked Questions about the Transformative Research Projects Program is available at: http://commonfund.nih.gov/TRA. Send questions to Transformative_Awards@mail.nih.gov.

 The NIH Common Fund (formerly the NIH Roadmap) encourages collaboration and supports a series of exceptionally high impact, trans-NIH programs. These programs are supported by the Common Fund, and managed by the NIH Office of the Director in partnership with the various NIH Institutes, Centers and Offices. Additional information about the NIH Common Fund can be found at http://commonfund.nih.gov. 

 For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.

Do you have a basic discovery that you think you can  translate to the clinic for the benefit of patients? The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center has announced availability of funds for the 2012 Bench to Bedside Awards Program to support exactly this type of project. This unique program offers Awards of $135,000 over 2 years and supports clinical research - including in rare diseases such as neurofibromatosis. As part of its mission the program  faciliates access for researchers outside of the NIH to the institutes wealth of clinical research resources.  

A Letter of Intent is due on September 28, 2011.  More information about the program and the application process can be found at http://www.cc.nih.gov/ccc/btb/ or submit any questions by email to BenchtoBedside@mail.nih.gov.

NIH invites proposals for 2012 NIH Director's Pioneer Awards and New Innovator Awards for innovative approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research. 

• Pioneer Awards:  
  • Up to $2.5 million in direct costs over 5 years
  • Open to scientists at any career stage. 
•  New Innovator Awards: 
  • Up to $1.5 million in direct costs over 5 years
  • For early career stage investigators (ESI), defined as those who have not received an NIH R01 or similar grant and are within 10 years of completing their terminal research degree or medical residency.   

NIH expects to make at least 7 Pioneer Awards and at least 33 New Innovator Awards in summer 2012.  The deadline for submitting Pioneer Award applications is October 7, 2011. See the instructions in the Funding Opportunity Announcement RFA-RM-11-004.  
The deadline for submitting New Innovator Award applications is October 14, 2011. See the instructions in the Funding Opportunity Announcement RFA-RM-11-005.