Sponsor Deadline for Letters of Intent (requested but not required): 30 days in advance of the full proposal deadline
FAS/SEAS/OSP Deadline: 5 business days prior to submission
Sponsor Deadlines for Full Proposals: June 7, 2022; June 7, 2023; June 7, 2024
Award Information: Application budgets are not limited. The duration of the UG3 phase cannot exceed 3 years and the total duration of the UG3/UH3 phases combined may not exceed 5 years. NIH intends to commit an estimated total of $10M to fund 6-9 awards.
The purpose of this FOA is to encourage applications that will develop and validate novel tools to facilitate the detailed analysis and manipulation of complex circuits in large brains. Critical advances in the treatment of brain disorders in human populations are hindered by our lack of ability to monitor and manipulate circuitry in safe, minimally-invasive ways. Clinical intervention with novel cell- and circuit-specific tools will require extensive focused research designed to remove barriers for targeted circuit manipulation. In addition to identification and removal of barriers, the need to delineate dysfunctional circuitry poses additional challenges. Neuroscience has experienced an impressive influx of exciting new research tools in the past decade, especially since the launch of the BRAIN Initiative. However, the majority of these cell- and circuit-specific mapping, monitoring, and manipulating tools has been developed for use in model organisms, primarily rodents, fish and flies. These cutting-edge tools are increasingly adaptable to larger mammalian brains and, more importantly, are emerging as potential human therapeutic strategies for brain disorders. A pressing need to develop tools for use in large brains or those that are more directly relevant to the human brain is the focus of this initiative. The initiative will support initial proof of principle studies aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of using the cutting-edge approaches in humans and other mammalian species (e.g., non-human primate [NHP]/sheep/pigs).
The UG3 phase should be focused on the development of the tool, method, or approach, including demonstrating feasibility for use in larger animal or human brains. Each phase will be milestone-driven and only those projects attaining the UG3 milestones have potential to progress to the UH3 phase. The UH3 phase supports testing/validation of the tools in efforts to evaluate the performance, sensitivity, and selectivity of the tool(s) in humans or non-human primates.