Limited Competition: Small Grant Program for the NCATS Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program (R03 Clinical Trial Optional)

The focus of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is to produce insights into disease detection and prevention strategies, burden, severity, diagnostics, treatment, and outcomes of infectious diseases in international travelers. Timely surveillance and sentinel detection are essential for collecting actionable data. The research should:Address public health questions that improve the speed of outbreak detection.Help develop guidelines and recommendations to improve patient care.Enhance understanding of the natural history of disease.Optimize genomic surveillance as well as diagnostic and treatment strategies.Advance the global health security of the United States.This NOFO will have two components:Component A – Clinic-based sentinel network.Component B – Sentinel detection in international transportation hubs.You may apply for Component A, B, or both. If your application for both Component A and B is ranked top, Component B will be awarded.

The overarching goal of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) and its companion opportunities is to establish the Precision Medicine with AI: Integrating Imaging with Multimodal Data (PRIMED-AI) Program to support development of innovative, reliable, cost-effective, and sustainable multimodal AI-based clinical decision support (CDS) tools. PRIMED-AI CDS tools are based on the integration of clinical imaging with other types of multimodal health data to enhance care for patients with a wide range of health conditions. The PRIMED-AI Program seeks to catalyze the adoption of AI-based CDS tools into clinical workflows to enable novel personalized medicine strategies that address significant health challenges. The purpose of this NOFO is to solicit applications for the creation of a Validation Center to serve as a dedicated hub for the comprehensive evaluation and characterization of AI-enabled, image-based, multimodal CDS tools developed by the PRIMED-AI Consortium, to ensure these tools are reliable, reproducible, and generalizable. The Validation Center will focus on verification, validation, interoperability, and uncertainty quantification to comprehensively characterize performance of the CDS tools developed by the program. The core functions of the Validation Center will involve the systematic validation of PRIMED-AI Consortium deliverables, including those emerging from award recipients under the Playbook, Data-to-Model Academic-Industrial Partnerships, and Model-to-Clinic NOFOs.

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to support the next 5-year award period of the Clinician-Scientist Transdisciplinary Aging Research Coordinating Center (Clin-STAR CC), whose mission is to serve as a national resource for clinician-investigators across specialties and disciplines who are focusing their careers on aging research. This NOFO intends to build upon NIA's substantial investments to foster the development of clinician-scientists across specialties and disciplines. The specific goals of this initiative are to convey scientific and research knowledge on aging research; foster networking and collaboration between clinician-scientist leaders in aging research and clinician-investigators across specialties and disciplines who wish to focus on aging research; provide mentoring and career development support for emerging clinician-scientists committed to pursuing aging research in their clinical specialty or discipline; and advance interdisciplinary research projects in aging. Ultimately, the Clin-STAR CC is intended to provide a multi-faceted national research platform leading to improved patient-centered care for older adults across specialties and disciplines.

The Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare Diseases:innovation (GREGoRi) initiative seeks to accelerate a paradigm shift in rare disease diagnosis by reimagining the tools, molecular technologies and analytical approaches used to identify the causal gene(s) and/or variant(s) underlying rare genetic disorders. The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity is to establish the GREGoRi Technology Integration Center, which will enable the development of standards and best practices for applying new and emerging molecular methods in rare disease diagnosis. A major deliverable of the Center will be a multidimensional dataset that can be used for the development and benchmarking of novel tools and strategies that facilitate rare disease diagnosis.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) invites a single cooperative agreement application for the Resource Center for the Cardiovascular Repository for Type 1 Diabetes (CaRe-T1D). The purpose of CaRe-T1D is to support innovative, discovery and mechanistic research through the study of human cardiovascular (CV) tissue. This research seeks to better understand cardiovascular disease (CVD) in type 1 diabetes, highlight differences compared to type 2 diabetes, and ultimately guide the development of therapies to treat this major cause of morbidity and mortality for individuals with type 1 diabetes. To achieve these goals, the Resource Center will expand the CaRe-T1D biorepository of human CV tissue, further develop the data commons for data sharing and for artificial intelligence (AI) tools, coordinate the research activities of the investigative teams in the CaRe-T1D consortium, and make CaRe-T1D resources accessible to the broader research community. This NOFO is associated with the Special Diabetes Program (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/about-niddk/research-areas/diabetes/type-1-diabetes-special-statutory-funding-program/about-special-diabetes-program) which funds research on the prevention, treatment, and cure of type 1 diabetes and its complications, including unique, innovative, and collaborative research consortia and clinical trials networks.This is a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for a Single Source that will invite application(s) from eligible organization(s) to apply. Please see Section III. Eligibility for additional information. In accordance with NIH standard peer-review processes, the application(s) will be peer-reviewed, and only meritorious application(s) will be considered for funding.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) invites applications from clinical centers to participate in a consortium to test anti-obesity medication (AOM) treatment strategies for youth with obesity that maximize benefits and minimize risks of AOM use. Such intervention strategies should support the promotion of healthy growth and development; adequate nutritional status/intake, healthy eating and physical activity behaviors; mental health and well-being (e.g., body image, self-esteem, mood, etc.), and quality of life and be feasible to implement in clinical care settings. Priority areas include testing strategies to determine optimal developmental stage for AOM initiation, rate and amount of weight loss, AOM class, dose, frequency, and duration, and content and intensity of adjunct lifestyle therapies that may be imperative to ensure normal psychological and physical development and to potentially avoid lifelong dependence on AOMs. Investigators should also evaluate potential predictors of response/ nonresponse to various treatment strategies under evaluation. The clinical centers may conduct independent or multicenter trials but will collaborate on the development of protocols, use of common measures and data elements, use of a central laboratory and standardized procedures to collect data and biospecimens, and data analyses and manuscripts. This NOFO uses a cooperative agreement mechanism (U01) and runs in parallel with a companion NOFO (RFA-DK-27-136).

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) invites applications for a Research Coordinating Center (RCC) to participate in a consortium of clinical centers that will test anti-obesity medication (AOM) treatment strategies for youth with obesity that maximize benefits and minimize risks of AOM use. Such intervention strategies should support the promotion of healthy growth and development; adequate nutritional status/intake, healthy eating and physical activity behaviors; mental health and well-being (e.g., body image, self-esteem, mood, etc.), and quality of life and be feasible to implement in clinical care settings. Priority areas include testing strategies to determine optimal developmental stage for AOM initiation, rate and amount of weight loss, AOM class, dose, frequency, and duration, and content and intensity of adjunct lifestyle therapies that may be imperative to ensure normal psychological and physical development and to potentially avoid lifelong dependence on AOMs. Investigators should also evaluate potential predictors of response/ nonresponse to various treatment strategies under evaluation. The clinical centers may conduct independent or multicenter trials but will collaborate on the development of protocols, use of common measures and data elements, use of a central laboratory and standardized procedures to collect data and biospecimens, and data analyses and manuscriptsThe RCC will lead, manage, and harmonize efforts for the Consortium including 1) providing management and administrative support; 2) providing leadership and expertise on statistical design and analysis, 3) providing research coordination with a central laboratory, 4) harmonizing data collection methods and use of common data elements, 5) developing the database; 6) conducting data management and data analyses for Consortium studies; and 7) fostering research collaborations. This NOFO uses a cooperative agreement mechanism (U24) and runs in parallel with a companion NOFO (RFA-DK-27-121).

The purpose of the NCI Pathway to Independence Award for Early-Stage Postdoctoral Researchers (K99/R00) program is to increase and maintain a strong cohort of new and talented, NCI-supported, independent investigators. This program is designed for postdoctoral fellows with research and/or clinical doctoral degrees who do not require an extended period of mentored research training beyond their doctoral degrees. The objective of this award is to facilitate a timely transition of these fellows from their mentored, postdoctoral research positions to independent tenure-track (or equivalent) faculty positions. The program will provide independent NCI research support during this transition to help awardees to launch competitive, independent research careers. Researchers in the scientific areas of cancer control, cancer prevention and cancer data sciences are especially encouraged to work with their institutions to apply. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is designed specifically for candidates proposing research that does not involve leading an independent clinical trial, a clinical trial feasibility study, or an ancillary clinical trial. Under this NOFO candidates are permitted to propose a research experience in a clinical trial led by a mentor or co-mentor. Those proposing a clinical trial or an ancillary clinical trial as lead investigator, should apply to the companion NOFOs (PAR-23-287 or PAR-23-288).

Through this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to accelerate the pace of translation of NCI-supported methods/assays/technologies (referred to as "assays") to the clinic. Specifically, the focus of this NOFO is on the adaption and clinical validation of molecular/cellular/imaging markers (referred to as "markers" r "biomarkers") for cancer detection, diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring, and prediction of response in treatment, as well as markers for cancer control and prevention. Research applications may support the acquisition of well-annotated specimens from NCI-supported or other clinical trials or observational cohorts/consortia for the purpose of clinical validation of the assay. Research projects proposed for this NOFO encourage multi-disciplinary interaction among scientific investigators, assay developers, clinicians, statisticians, and clinical laboratory staff. Clinical laboratory scientist(s) and statistical experts are highly encouraged to comprise integral parts of the application. This NOFO is not intended to support early-stage development of technology or the conduct of clinical trials, but rather the adaption and validation of assays to the point where they could be integrated into clinical trials as investigational assays/tools/devices.

Through this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) invites applications to support the validation of molecular/cellular/imaging markers (referred to as "markers" or "biomarkers") 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 will support investigator-initiated research for both analytical, and clinical validation of assays to be used in cancer treatment, control, or prevention trials supported by the NCI. This NOFO will also support the validation of pharmacodynamic markers and markers of toxicity. Applicants should have assays that work on human samples and whose importance is well justified for development into clinical assays. As chemotherapies and/or radiation therapies are increasingly combined with immunotherapies to enhance the durability of anti-cancer responses, assays for measuring multiple markers, including immune markers, can be developed and validated simultaneously. The UH2 phase of this NOFO supports analytical validation of assays for these molecular/cellular/imaging markers, which must be achieved within 2 years before assays may undergo clinical validation. The UH3 phase of this NOFO supports clinical validation of analytically validated assays for up to 3 years using well-annotated biospecimens from retrospective or prospective clinical trials or studies. This NOFO may be used to validate existing assays for use in other cancer clinical trials, observational studies, or population studies. Efforts to harmonize clinical laboratory tests, including investigation into the performance and reproducibility of assays across multiple clinical laboratories, are also appropriate for this funding opportunity. Projects proposed for this NOFO will require multi-disciplinary collaboration among scientific investigators, oncologists, statisticians, and clinical laboratory scientist.