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 28, 2023; February 15, 2024; October 17, 2024

Award Information: Application budgets are not limited. The maximum project period is 5 years. The issuing IC and partner components intend to commit an estimated total of $13,000,000 per year to fund 5 to 9 awards.

This FOA is intended to support the creation of Centers for accelerated engineering and optimization of high-impact, molecular technologies to monitor and/or manipulate brain cell activity in experimental animals. The Centers will produce high-impact molecular probes such as, but not limited to, fluorescent protein indicators of neuronal state variables (e.g., intracellular calcium, membrane voltage, released neurotransmitters/neuromodulators, etc.), molecular integrators of neural activity, optogenetic, chemogenetic, sonogenetic, magnetogenetic actuators, and activity-dependent molecular switches. This FOA is part of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative Armamentarium project, whose goal is to generate tools to specifically access, manipulate, and monitor brain cell types across multiple species. In this FOA, technology optimization is sought for existing tools for brain cell monitoring or manipulation that are beyond the proof-of-concept stage and that can be delivered selectively as payloads to cell types using newly developed brain cell access reagents. Each Molecular Payloads Center is expected to integrate: (1) sufficiently scaled molecular engineering, (2) in vivo validation of improvements seen in engineering assays in intact brains of experimental animals, (3) benchmarking throughout the technology development against existing best-in-class tools, and (4) adaptation of tools into easily produced and applied formats for neuroscience users. Molecular Payloads Centers may also include optional demonstration experiments that establish groundbreaking capabilities of improved molecular tools in vivo. This FOA will foster close interaction between technologists and neurobiologists in a research consortium including tool developers funded by other Armamentarium FOAs for brain cell access reagents. The Armamentarium consortium will promote rigorous technology design, benchmarking, validation, and distribution of monitoring and/or manipulation tools and associated brain cell access reagents.