Purpose:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has published six Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) associated with its new Common Fund program, Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program. The goal of this program is to build on recent advances in biomedical science, including in artificial intelligence (AI) and microbiome science, to develop algorithms to predict individual responses to food and dietary choices. The program will be the first to take advantage of the existing infrastructure and diverse research participant cohort established by the All of Us Research Program and will be structured as a consortium of centers. These centers will work collaboratively with the All of Us Research Program and each other to achieve the program’s three goals:
1. To examine individual differences observed in response to different diets by studying the interactions between diet, genes, proteins, microbiome, metabolism and other individual contextual factors;
2. To use artificial intelligence (AI) to develop algorithms to predict individual responses to foods and dietary patterns; and
3. To validate algorithms for clinical application.
Background:
The program is designed to implement several aspects of the first NIH-wide Strategic Plan for Nutrition Research, which was released in May 2020.
The Artificial Intelligence for Multimodal Data Modeling and Bioinformatics (AIMDMB) Center will be responsible for developing comprehensive dietary intervention algorithms that can predict biological responses to nutritional and other inputs. The AIMDMB Center will also be tasked with developing a suite of visualization and analysis tools for modeling multimodal, “AI-ready” biomedical data within the All of Us Researcher Dashboard, and the Center will be a hub for communicating this data to the broader Nutrition for Precision Health consortium.
The Nutrition for Precision Health program will include three data generation centers. Data collected from these centers will be deposited in the All of Us Researcher Workbench and used by the AIMDMB Center for algorithm development, as well as by other researchers affiliated with Nutrition for Precision Health. The Metabolomics and Clinical Assays Center (MCAC) will “(1) generate targeted and non-targeted metabolite profiles and (2) perform or facilitate clinical assays from blood, urine and stool biospecimens.” The Microbiome and Metagenomics Center (MMC) will “perform microbiome, metagenomics and metatranscriptomics analyses on stool samples for all participants.” The Dietary Assessment Center (DAC) will conduct dietary assessments of enrolled participants, as well as develop innovative approaches to monitoring dietary intake.
The Clinical Centers will be responsible for enrolling participants into the Nutrition for Precision Health study, as well as implementing dietary intervention protocols throughout the course of the study. Because the Nutrition for Precision Health cohort will be nested within the broader All of Us cohort, all Nutrition for Precision Health participants will also be enrolled into All of Us. Clinical Centers are expected to work with All of Us Health Care Provider Organizations on participant engagement and enrollment. Finally, a Research Coordinating Center (RCC) will provide administrative management and coordination across the consortium and will work with other consortium components on research protocol development and data sharing and management.
Key Dates:
For all awards, applications are due April 6, 2021. Letters of intent are optional and are due 30 days prior to the application due date.
URLs for more information:
NIH plans to commit approximately $126 million over five years to new awards for the Nutrition for Precision Health program, structured as follows:
|
Award (Link to RFA) |
Number of Awards; Mechanism |
Estimated Award Size |
|
Artificial Intelligence for Multimodal Data Modeling and Bioinformatics (AIMDMB) Center (RFA-RM-21-001) |
1; U54 |
$2,000,000 in FY 2022 and FY 2023, $3,000,000 per year for FY 2024 – FY 2026 ($13 million total) |
|
Metabolomics and Clinical Assays Center (MCAC) (RFA-RM-21-002) |
1; U24 |
$400,000 in FY 2022, $5,000,000 per year for FY 2023 – FY 2026 ($20.4 million total) |
|
Microbiome and Metagenomics Center (MMC) (RFA-RM-21-003) |
1; U24 |
$550,000 in FY 2022, $3,500,000 per year for FY 2023 – FY 2026 ($14.55 million total) |
|
Dietary Assessment Center (DAC) (RFA-RM-21-004) |
1; U24 |
$1,500,000 in FY 2022, $2,200,000 per year for FY 2023 – FY 2025, and $1,500,000 in FY 2026 ($9.6 million total) |
|
Clinical Centers (RFA-RM-21-005) |
5-6; UG1 |
$7,000,000 in FY 2022, $9,500,000 per year for FY 2023 – FY 2026 ($7.5-9 million total per award) |
|
Research Coordinating Center (RCC) (RFA-RM-21-006) |
1; U24 |
$3,500,000 in FY 2022, $5,000,000 per year for years FY 2023 – FY 2026, which includes $2,500,000 per year for FY 2023 – FY 2026 for capitation costs ($23.5 million total) |
Filed Under: Funding Opportunities