If interested in applying, consider discussing this opportunity with The Conafay Group (contact Steve Wasserman [ssw3an]).
The DoD has announced this funding opportunity in its Psychological Health/Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program (PH/TBIRP), which is being managed by the office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). This funding opportunity is a joint DoD and Department of Veterans Affairs effort.
Required Research Elements. To meet the intent of the LIMBIC award mechanism, applicants must be able to:
- Demonstrate the ability to enroll relevant cohorts, to include military and Veteran populations, and follow them over time.
- Describe a military-relevant cohort with a history of mTBI. Applicants are strongly encouraged to leverage as many existing research efforts, infrastructure, and sample repositories as appropriate. As such, the applications should articulate plans for merging or leveraging existing cohorts (e.g., combination of cross-sectional studies, or follow-on work from existing larger longitudinal cohorts).
- Address enrollment of active duty Service members with the understanding they will eventually transition to Veteran status. For prospectively enrolling studies, the target population must include a robust distribution of Service members and Veterans at the time of original enrollment into the study. Engagement and inclusion of existing intramural DoD and VA efforts and cohorts are strongly encouraged. Subjects are not necessarily limited to those with combat experience; however, the ability to capture data from Service members and Veterans with combat-related TBI is strongly encouraged.
- Collect data in accordance with established TBI Common Data Elements (CDEs) guidelines for submission to the Federal Interagency TBI Research (FITBIR; https://fitbir.nih.gov/) Information System, to include data required to generate FITBIR Global Unique Identifier (GUID). Use of Unique Data Elements (UDEs) are strongly discouraged unless the research question warrants inclusion. Acceptance of UDEs is subject to approval of the program office.
- Identify potential differences in long-term neurological outcomes from blast-related versus impact-only TBI.
- Identify pathophysiological and biomarker signatures that may be predictive of long-term outcomes and healthcare utilization (e.g., fiber tract breaks in specific brain regions).
- Describe analysis(es) from existing available biorepositories and/or biospecimens from the proposed longitudinal study to identify novel biomarkers for chronic TBI and stratify and characterize mTBI subgroups based on recovery (poor versus good outcomes) and neurodegeneration (determining susceptibility to neurodegenerative conditions).
- Conduct epidemiological analysis of existing DoD and VA databases relating to mTBI for correlations and associations of mTBI and associated comorbidities such as pain, neurodegenerative disease, psychological health status, and neurosensory deficits.
Key elements.
- Supports independent investigators at any academic level.
- Supports a consortium conducting a single large longitudinal study and supporting sub-studies to analyze a large TBI cohort to include Service members and Veterans.
- Must address the “Required Research Elements” (listed above).
- Applications should describe a single large longitudinal cohort study and a minimum of four related sub-studies.
- All projects shall be limited to clinical and epidemiological research; clinical trials are not supported.
- Coordinating Center and study sites must apply through a single application.
- Pre-proposal is required; application submission is by invitation only.
- Maximum allowable costs (direct and indirect) are $25M via the DoD over a performance period of 5 years.
Detailed descriptions of the funding opportunity, evaluation criteria, and submission requirements can be found in the Program Announcements. The Program Announcements are available electronically for downloading from the Grants.gov website (http://www.grants.gov), the CDMRP website (http://cdmrp.army.mil/funding/prgdefault.shtml), and the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) (https://eBRAP.org).
All CDMRP funding opportunities, both recently and previously released, are available on the CDMRP website (http://cdmrp.army.mil).
Subsequent notifications will be sent when additional funding opportunities are released. A listing of all open CDMRP funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420.
Submission is a two-step process requiring both pre-application submission and full application submission. All pre-applications must be submitted through eBRAP (https://eBRAP.org). Full applications from extramural organizations (non-DoD organizations) must be submitted through Grants.gov (http://www.grants.gov). Intramural DoD organizations may submit full applications to either eBRAP or Grants.gov. Refer to the General Application Instructions, Section II.A. for registration and submission requirements for eBRAP and Grants.gov. For detailed information on the submission process, refer to Section II.D. of the Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity.
eBRAP is a multifunctional web-based system that allows PIs to submit their pre-applications electronically through a secure connection, to view and edit the content of their pre-applications and full applications, to receive communications from the CDMRP, and to submit documentation during award negotiations and period of performance. A key feature of eBRAP is the ability of an organization’s representatives and PIs to view and modify the Grants.gov application submissions associated with them. eBRAP will validate Grants.gov application files against the specific Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity requirements and discrepancies will be noted in an email to the PI and in the Full Application Files tab in eBRAP. It is the applicant’s responsibility to review all application components for accuracy as well as ensure proper ordering as specified in this Program Announcement/Funding Opportunity.
Deadlines:
- Required pre-proposal: October 8, 2018, 5:00 p.m. Eastern time
- Invited application: January 7, 2019, 11:59 p.m. Eastern time
Program URL: https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=308435 (click on related documents)
Filed Under: Funding Opportunities