March 20, 2006

News Articles

• New Electronic Process for R34s Ahead
• Soaring Research Costs
• CDC Adds Flu Strains to Select Agents List

Opportunities and Resources

• Building the Investigator Pipeline
  • New NIH Program Builds Bridge to Independence
  • NIH Gives Unsuccessful Applicants More Time to Reapply
  • NIAID Makes Its Own Mark
  • Minority Programs -- Another Piece of the Pipeline
• Genomic Resources for Immunology-Related Research

Advice Corner

• How Do I Look for Grant Opportunities?

New Initiatives

• See the initiative list.

	News Articles

New Electronic Process for R34s Ahead

For those of you planning to seek support for an investigator-initiated clinical trial, you will still request permission to submit an NIAID Clinical Trial Planning Grant (R34) even after the switch to electronic application.

Letters for June

For the June 1 receipt date, send NIAID a letter requesting permission to submit an application for a clinical trial R34 or U01.

In the future, you will be making that request electronically using a preapplication funding opportunity announcement (FOA) in Grants.gov. To see what information to include in your letter, go to Requesting Permission to Submit an R34.

FOA Coming Soon

Our R34 FOA is coming out in the next few weeks. Watch for it in the Guide or our NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID. This FOA is for the R34 application itself, not the request letter we mentioned above.

If you want to sign up for Email Alerts for new NIAID initiatives, go to the Funding News and Email Alerts Subscription Center, and select the "All NIAID Funding Opportunities or Choose Specific Areas Below" box in your profile. You can also edit an existing profile there.

Read more about the R34 process at Requesting Permission to Submit an R34 and the other resources on our Investigator-Initiated Clinical Trial Planning and Implementation Grants page.

Soaring Research Costs

NIH's budget may be flat, but compensations and inflation are on the rise, hiking the cost of performing biomedical research.

Based on new FY 2005 data, research costs are expected to rise 5.5 percent in FY 2006, a major revision from the 4.0 percent increase previously expected.

NIH gauges research costs using the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index (BRDPI, pronounced "bird pie").

The BRDPI measures changes in the average price of items such as personnel, supplies, and equipment purchased with NIH funds. It shows how much money is needed to keep purchasing power steady and maintain an activity at the previous year's level.

By early January, the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis provides NIH a preliminary estimate of the BRDPI. Later in the fiscal year, the Bureau may revise it, as it did recently. Find more information at National Institutes of Health Price Indexes.

CDC Adds Flu Strains to Select Agents List

There's a new addition to CDC's select agents and toxins: reconstructed, replication-competent forms of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus containing any portion of the coding regions of all eight gene segments.

CDC published the news in an interim final rule in the October 20, 2005, Federal Register; expect the final notice to appear soon.

For more information, go to the CDC's Select Agent Program page and the list of HHS and USDA Select Agents and Toxins.

	Opportunities and Resources

Building the Investigator Pipeline

Numbers of new investigators who succeed in gaining independent funding have changed little during the past two decades, prompting new attempts to push those counts higher.

NIH and NIAID are redoubling their drives to beat the existing record. To jump-start activity and generate new ideas, NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D., formed the NIH New Investigator Committee -- go to the NIH New Investigators Program for more information.

Below we describe new and existing programs, first from NIH and then NIAID. Other ideas are in the works -- we'll update you as they become final. You can find out if NIH considers you to be a new investigator by following the blue glossary link.

New NIH Program Builds Bridge to Independence

Joining other institutes and centers, NIAID is supporting the new NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) to help new investigators cross the PI threshold. Our article, "Brand New Award for New Investigators," told you about this new career development award last month.

This unique grant includes both mentored and independent research phases. In the first year of the program, NIH is looking to issue between 150 and 200 awards.

Like NIAID's existing Research Scholar Development Award (K22), the K99/R00 helps academic scientists move from postdoc to independent researcher. The table below highlights the main differences between the two.

To decide which award is right for you, read the NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) program announcement, including the Questions and Answers.

Learn more about both programs in Advice on Research Training and Career Awards starting with Career Development Awards. To gauge how hard it was to get an existing award in 2005, go to Success Rates for NIAID Training and Career Grants.

You can also contact Dr. Milton Hernández, director of NIAID's Office of Special Populations and Research Training, at 301-496-3775 or mh35c@nih.gov.

NIH Gives Unsuccessful Applicants More Time to Reapply

Taking another tack from award types, 40 CSR study sections started a peer review pilot in February that gives new investigators extra time to prepare a resubmission for the next review cycle.

Within about a week of the study section meeting, people participating in the pilot will have access to their summary statements. An extended deadline gives you four weeks to revise. Read more in our article "Extended Resubmission Dates for Some New Investigators."

NIAID Makes Its Own Mark

NIAID is using both old and new ways to help new investigators. Follow the links for details.

• New R01 payline. NIAID will fund investigators applying for a first R01 using a 16.0 percentile payline, a higher funding threshold than our standard 14.0 R01 payline. We announced this news in February in "Final Paylines, Higher R01 Payline for New Investigators."
• Selective pay. Being a new applicant gives you a leg up for selective pay funding of grants that just missed the payline. You cannot apply; a program officer must nominate you. Read more in the R56-Bridge Awards and Selective Pay questions and answers.
• R56-Bridge awards. High-Priority, Short-Term Project Awards (R56-Bridge) give one year of funding to investigators whose high-priority applications score outside the payline, with the expectation that they will submit amended applications. We give higher priority to new investigators. See the NIAID R56-Bridge Award SOP for details.
• Research Supplements. To give qualified people the opportunity to join a research lab, our supplements go to scientists from certain populations; see our Supplements Web page for details. Funding goes to an existing grantee, who hires the scientist through the supplement.
• Career Development and Fellowship Awards. Check out our career development awards and fellowships at Training and Career Awards, including Success Rates for NIAID Training and Career Grants. You can read more about the new K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award program in New NIH Program Builds a Bridge to Independence.
• Information and Advice. At Training and Career Awards, you can find information and advice on all awards NIAID supports, including our tutorials Advice on Research Training and Career Awards.

Minority Programs -- Another Piece of the Pipeline

To expand the ranks of minority scientists, NIAID sponsors many programs that support students and investigators from underrepresented groups through fellowships and research supplements. For a complete list, go to Minority Programs Supported by NIAID.

Read about questions on the success of these programs in the Science article "NIH Told to Get Serious About Giving Minorities a Hand" from January 20, 2006.

NIH Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni has formed a committee that is looking at ways to improve results and better capture data on the effectiveness of NIH's minority programs.

Genomics Resources for Immunology Research

Continuing our feature on genomic resources for investigators, this issue highlights immunology research. Find the full list of NIAID-supported resources at Resources for Researchers.

• Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource -- contains immune epitope information for NIAID category A, B, and C priority pathogens, including influenza. You can search for antibody and T-cell epitope information, and use the analysis tools to compare epitope information among viral or bacterial strains. For more information, visit Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource.
• Immunology Database and Analysis Portal (ImmPort) -- supports advanced information technology for producing, analyzing, archiving, and exchanging scientific data for NIAID-supported life science researchers as well as data analysis tools and immunology-focused ontology. Version 1.0, released in October 2005, contains a set of reference data, including immunology-specific genes with tools to query and visualize data. Other parts are in beta release and should be ready for the NIAID research community later in the year. Go to NIAID Bioinformatics Integration Support Contract and ImmPort for details.
• NIH Tetramer Core Facility -- provides tetramer reagents for detection of CD4+, CD8+, and NK T cells against infectious and other diseases. The Tetramer Web site has more information.
• NIH Nonhuman Primate Reagent Resource -- develops reagents for analyzing, monitoring, and modulating the NHP immune response. For more information, visit NIH Nonhuman Primate Reagent Resource.
• Systems Approach to Innate Immunity -- provides high-throughput microarray and other datasets, software tools for data analysis, experimental and analytical protocols, and reagents produced by the project, including animal models, purified proteins, and antibodies. Go to the Innate Immunity Systems Biology Web site.

	Advice Corner

How Do I Look for Grant Opportunities?

Depending on how broad a search you need -- federal government, NIH, or NIAID -- you have three online options: Grants.gov, the NIH Guide, and the NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID list. Each site has unique features, which we describe below.

When deciding where to start, remember that Grants.gov and the Guide link to each other in most cases, but not all.

If you are looking for just NIAID's opportunities, it's probably easiest to view them on NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID, a sortable list of Institute initiatives.

Grants.gov

• Grants.gov houses all federalwide funding opportunity announcements (FOA); each has a synopsis and a link at the bottom for more information. For NIH grant opportunities, "Link to Full Announcement" at the bottom of the FOA leads to the Guide.
• If a grant type uses electronic submission, click the "How to Apply" button at the top of the FOA to view the application package download page. Then click the "Download" link on the lower right.
• If the grant type uses paper submission, just scroll down to the Guide link-- you don't have to click "How to Apply." If you do, you will see red text that says no package exists.
• NIH grant opportunities have been published as Grants.gov FOAs since October 2003. To find older opportunities, use the Guide or NIAID's list of NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID. For expired opportunities, search the Guide's archive by year.

NIH Guide

• The Guide houses the full announcements for all NIH grant opportunities.
• If a grant type requires electronic submission, the Guide announcement includes an "Apply for Grant Electronically" button, which takes you to Grants.gov's application package download page. Then click the "download" link on the lower right.
• If the grant type uses paper submission, the "apply" button won't appear in the Guide announcement. Use the PHS 398 to submit a paper application.

NIAID's Funding Opportunities List

• The NIAID-only NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID list links to the most relevant information source, either the Grants.gov FOA or the NIH Guide announcement.
• It tells you how to apply -- paper or electronic -- for each RFA and PA. If a grant uses electronic submission, we link to the Grants.gov FOA. From there, you can click "How to Apply" or continue to the full announcement in the Guide.
• If the grant type uses paper, we link directly to the Guide rather than sending you through Grants.gov.
• Click the column headers to sort the NIAID list, or search titles for science terms using Control-F. If you need a full-text search to see all announcements that mention tuberculosis, for example, use the Guide or Grants.gov.

Remember that after each grant type switches to electronic, you will apply using its unique Grants.gov FOA. Every grant type will have a separate FOA, even the R01.

Find out why in our January 19, 2006, article "Clearing Up a Bit of Fog on e-Application." For the NIH transition timetable, go to Transition Strategy and Timeline.

	New Initiatives

• NIH RFA-AI-06-006, Tropical Medicine Research Centers (P50)
• NIH RFA-AI-06-009, Novel HIV Therapies: Integrated Preclinical/Clinical Program (U19)
• Grants.gov PA-06-180, NIH Small Research Grant Program (Parent R03)
• Grants.gov PA-06-181, NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Program (Parent R21)
• RFP-NIH-NIAID-DAIDS-07-22, Pharmaceutical and Chemical Resources for AIDS Drug Development
• RFP-NIH-NIAID-DMID-07-18, Topical Microbicide Safety and Efficacy Evaluation in Nonhuman Primates

See all our initiatives at NIH Funding Opportunities Relevant to NIAID.