The NIDA Avant-Garde Award Program for HIV/AIDS Research is designed to support individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose cutting edge – and possibly transformative – approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research on HIV/AIDS that are relevant to drug abuse. The term “avant-garde” is used to describe highly innovative approaches and ideas that have the potential to be transformative. The NIDA Avant-Garde award supports high priority AIDS research as described in NOT-OD-15-137 https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-137.html. Areas of interest include innovative, basic research that may lead to improved preventive interventions or therapies; creative, new strategies to prevent disease transmission; novel approaches to improve disease outcomes; or novel strategies to improve the lives of those living with HIV; and creative approaches to eradicating HIV. The award is intended to support high-impact research that will open new areas of HIV/AIDS research and/or lead to new avenues for treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS among drug abusers. The nexus with drug abuse should be clearly defined. Examples of studies of relevance to drug abuse include: studies using populations with significant numbers of drug users or samples from drug using populations; studies using in vitro systems and/or animal models that test the effects of drugs of abuse on HIV pathogenesis, progression, or treatment; and studies to develop interventions or treatments that are tailored to substance using populations. Proposed research should reflect ideas and approaches that are substantially different from those already being studied by the investigator or others. This announcement defines biomedical and behavioral research broadly—the emphasis is on creativity and potential impact rather than a particular discipline or research area. The award is meant to support individuals who intend to pursue research directions that are not readily supported by other NIH grant mechanisms. The program is not intended simply to expand the funding of an already supported research project, but rather to support highly creative researchers to pursue visionary concepts and approaches to research on HIV/AIDS.
Special Considerations
National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse Recommended Guidelines for the Administration of Drugs to Human Subjects: The National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse (NACDA) recognizes the importance of research involving the administration of drugs with abuse potential, and dependence or addiction liability, to human subjects. Potential applicants are encouraged to obtain and review these recommendations of Council before submitting an application that will administer compounds to human subjects. The guidelines are available on NIDA’s Web site at http://www.nida.nih.gov/about/organization/nacda/CouncilStatement.html.
Points to Consider Regarding Tobacco Industry Funding of NIDA Applicants: The National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse (NACDA) encourages NIDA and its grantees to consider the points it has set forth with regard to existing or prospective sponsored research agreements with tobacco companies or their related entities and the impact of acceptance of tobacco industry funding on NIDA’s credibility and reputation within the scientific community. Please see (http://ww2.drugabuse.gov/about/organization/nacda/points-to-consider.html) for details.
Data Harmonization for Substance Abuse and Addiction via the PhenX Toolkit: NIDA strongly encourages investigators involved in human-subject studies to employ a common set of tools and resources that will promote the collection of comparable data across studies and to do so by incorporating the measures from the Core and Specialty collections, which are available in the Substance Abuse and Addiction Collection of the PhenX Toolkit (www.phenxtoolkit.org). Please see NOT-DA-12-008 (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-DA-12-008.html) for further details
Deadlines: August 14, 2018; August 14, 2019; August 14, 2020 (full proposals; letters of intent due 30 days prior to the deadline)
URL: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-DA-18-019.html
Filed Under: Funding Opportunities