Funding Opportunities

The Rita Allen Foundation and the American Pain Society announce a call for applications for the 2009 Rita Allen Foundation Award in Pain.  The RAF and APS may award two grants in the amount of $50,000 annually, for a period of up to three years to those research proposals demonstrating the greatest merit and potential for success.

Candidates must have completed their training and provided persuasive evidence of distinguished achievement or extraordinary promise in basic science research in pain.  Candidates should be in the early stages of their career with an appointment at a faculty level.

The entire award is to be allocated to projects specifically chosen by the recipient.  Overhead is not supported.

Deadlines:

Applications may be submitted online by visiting
http://www.connect2conferences.com/aps4/ws_member/member_login.php

beginning December 11, 2008 and will be due by midnight January 23, 2009.  Grant awards will be announced by April 1, 2009.  Funds will be awarded for the initial 12 month grant period that will begin upon satisfactory execution of the grant agreement between the RAF and the recipient’s institution. Applications will be reviewed by a Scientific Advisory Committee of APS and RAF. The committee will not provide a review of unsuccessful applications. (For more information....)

Roadmap Transformative R01 Program
RFA-RM-08-029 (R01)

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-08-029.html


Key Dates

Release/Posted Date: September 9, 2008
Opening Date: December 29, 2008 (Earliest date an application may be submitted to Grants.gov)
Letters of Intent Receipt Date: December 29, 2008
Application Due Date: January 29, 2009
A major goal of the NIH is to foster bold and creative investigator-initiated research. While R01 grants support the bulk of mainstream NIH investigator-initiated efforts, the Transformative Research Projects Program (T-R01) is designed to provide a more flexible and engaging avenue for support of investigators testing novel concepts and truly transformative ideas. The primary objective of the T-R01 initiative is to create a program that is specifically designed to support exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research with the potential to create new or challenge existing scientific paradigms. The T-R01 program is a High Risk/High Reward Demonstration Project supported by the NIH Common Fund, in which novel approaches to peer review and program management will also be piloted. Applicants to this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) must clearly articulate (1) the fundamental issue to be addressed and its overarching importance to the biomedical/behavioral research enterprise, (2) how the studies will either establish new or disrupt existing paradigms, and (3) how the proposed rationale and/or approaches significantly differ from state of the art in the field. The goal of the Transformative Research Projects Program is to provide support for individual scientists or collaborative investigative teams who propose transformative approaches to major contemporary challenges. To be considered transformative, projects must have the potential to create or overturn fundamental scientific paradigms through the use of new and novel approaches. Successful projects will be expected to have a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research. Consistent with this highly transformative focus, projects supported under the T-R01 program will reflect ideas substantially different from mainstream concepts being pursued in the investigator’s laboratory or elsewhere. (For more information...html)

Behavioral Pharmacology and Genetics:
Translating and Targeting Individual Differences

RFA-DA-09-016

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-DA-09-016.html

Key Dates

Release/Posted Date: October 1, 2008
Opening Date: December 27, 2008 (Earliest date an application may be submitted to Grants.gov)
Letters of Intent Receipt Date: December 29, 2008
Application Due Date: January 27, 2009
Peer Review Date: May/June 2009
Council Review Date: August 2009
Earliest Anticipated Start Date: September 2009

Individual differences in response to drugs of abuse may confer vulnerability or resistance to drug abuse or the development of addiction. Several lines of evidence indicate that genetic variation contributes to drug abuse and addiction as well as to the propensity to use specific classes of drugs, such as psychostimulants, opiates, marijuana and nicotine. Recently developed genetic methodologies make it possible to better understand drug abuse phenotypes in terms of underlying genetic factors. This FOA seeks applications that use controlled, human laboratory-based experimental techniques for the measurement of behavior, combined with genetic analyses, to study drug abuse phenotypes and/or endophenotypes, and their relationship to (a) individual differences in response to drugs of abuse; (b) individual differences in the consequences of repeated abuse; or (c) pharmacogenetic differences in response to putative or currently used pharmacotherapeutic agents for treating addiction. Research in these areas may identify genetic variations that will help define the biochemical mechanisms underlying drug effects and the associated biological and/or behavioral processes responsible for individual differences, and may suggest genetically targeted pharmacotherapeutic approaches for treating addiction. (For more information...html)

This is a new opportunity for drug abuse researchers to obtain federal funding for their scholarly work. CPDD and The Friends of NIDA convinced Congress to include drug abuse for the first time as a category for funding in the Department of the Army Congressionally Mandated Medical Peer Review Program. The deadline for grant submission is July 2, 2008. (For complete information...html)

The following are two recently released NIH funding opportunities, with a set aside of funds, targeted at human and animal research on women and sex/gender differences. See attachment and links below for more details. Receipt dates: October 16, 2007, 2008, 2009.

PAS-07-382 (R03) http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAS-07-382.html

PAS-07-381 (R21) http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAS-07-381.html

Cora Lee Wetherington, Ph.D.
Women & Sex/Gender Research Coordinator
National Institute on Drug Abuse
6001 Executive Blvd., Rm 4282, MSC 9555
Bethesda, MD 20892-9555 (For overnight mail: Rockville , MD 20857 )
Phone: (301) 435-1319
Fax: (301) 594-6043
E-mail: wetherington@nih.gov

The Neuroscience Initiative on Alcoholism: Stress Anxiety and Alcohol (aka INIA Stress) is soliciting pilot project applications to compliment and enhance the research ongoing in this consortium. The major goal of the INIA Stress is to more fully understand neural responses to stress and alcohol, and how they may influence excessive alcohol consumption in organisms ranging from mice to monkeys and humans. We have put together this research consortium to gain much needed information about the neural effects of stress, alcohol and stress/alcohol interactions on the level of expression and function of key neuronal molecules, neuronal activity and synaptic efficacy, the neurophysiology of key systems involved in stress and alcohol interactions, genetic factors that contribute to alcohol-stress interactions, as well as stress-related conditioning and other behaviors related to stress. [More...pdf]