NINDS Cooperative Program in Translational Research for Resistant Epilepsy and Epileptogenesis (U01)

archived

Purpose. The goal of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA), from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is to support preclinical development of new therapies to cure epilepsy, prevent the emergence of epilepsy following brain injury (including status epilepticus, traumatic brain injury, stroke, encephalitis, or other injury) or in other high-risk groups, or to better treat individuals with intractable epilepsy. The program will facilitate solicitation, development, and review of therapy-directed projects to accelerate the translation of basic research discoveries into therapeutic candidates for clinical testing. This program is specifically directed at projects that include therapeutic leads with demonstrated activity against the intended disease target. The program supports preclinical optimization and testing of these leads and projects must be sufficiently advanced that an IND or IDE application to the FDA can be submitted by the end of the project period. The program does not support early-stage therapeutic discovery activities such as high throughput screening. The program also excludes clinical research, basic research, and studies of disease mechanism. This is a milestone-driven cooperative agreement program involving participation of NIH staff in the development of the project plan and monitoring of research progress. Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the U01 Cooperative Agreement mechanism and runs in parallel with a FOA of identical scientific scope, PAR-10-143, that encourages applications under the NIH Exploratory/Developmental (R21) mechanism. Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. The NINDS funding plan for this FOA will support up to $3.6 million total costs, which is sufficient for at least one new application per year for 3 years. The total amount awarded and the number of awards will depend upon the numbers, quality, duration, and costs of the applications received. Because the nature and scope of the proposed research will vary from application to application, it is anticipated that the size and duration of each award will also vary.

High