Ancillary Studies to Large Ongoing Clinical Projects (R21)

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Purpose. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) solicits applications that propose to conduct time-sensitive ancillary studies that are exploratory/developmental and highly innovative in nature and related to the NIAMS mission in conjunction with privately or publicly funded, large, ongoing clinical projects. The ongoing parent project can be a large clinical trial or observational study, or a disease registry that can provide a sufficient cohort of well-characterized patients, infrastructure, data, and biological samples. Applications submitted in response to this FOA will undergo an accelerated review and award process. Each application must include a timeline to demonstrate that the parent project has adequate time left to accommodate the proposed ancillary study. In addition, it must justify the time-sensitive nature of the ancillary study and the need for an expedited review and award process. It must also document permission from the parent project to use the patient cohorts, data and biological materials. The objective of this FOA is to provide a flexible mechanism to leverage established resources and maximize the return on the existing investments in parent projects. Successful ancillary studies will enhance the scientific content and value of the parent projects, improve the research communitys understanding of a disease or organ system in the NIAMS portfolio, and thus identify novel targets for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the NIH Exploratory/Developmental Grant (R21) award mechanism and runs in parallel with another FOA of identical scientific scope, RFA-AR-10-010, which encourages applications under the NIH Research Grant (R01) award mechanism. Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. The NIAMS expects to commit approximately $1.5 million total costs in FY2011 to support a total of four to six new awards combined from the two parallel FOAs for R01s (RFA-AR-11-012) and R21s (RFA-AR-11-013). Awards issued under this FOA are contingent upon the availability of funds and the submission of a sufficient number of meritorious applications.

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