Pilot Centers for Precision Disease Modeling (U54)(Clinical Trials Not Allowed) | PAR 20 085

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 20 085

The Pilot Centers for Precision Disease Modeling (U54) funding opportunity (PAR-20-085) is a National Institutes of Health cooperative agreement designed to launch a small number of collaborative centers that can connect human precision medicine findings directly to advanced animal modeling. The central idea is to tighten the link between what is being discovered in patients (especially specific genomic variants) and what can be tested and understood in preclinical systems, using modern animal genomics, gene editing, and related technologies such as the creation of interspecies somatic hybrids. By building an integrated, repeatable workflow across these areas, the program aims to improve how well preclinical studies predict human disease biology and treatment response.

A key deliverable expected from each Center is a practical, community-facing process for bringing human genomic variation into an animal model testing pipeline. In other words, the broader research community should be able to nominate unique human variants, and the Center should be able to evaluate those variants in a cost-effective, high-throughput way. The FOA emphasizes more than just creating edited animals: once gene editing is confirmed to be correct, the Centers are expected to set up robust assays and phenotyping strategies to perform comprehensive functional studies. This means moving from "we made the variant" to "we can measure what it does," including whether and how it causes disease-relevant changes, and doing so in a way that supports systematic interpretation across projects.

Another major mission is resource creation and distribution. These Centers are not meant to be closed efforts that only generate data for the proposing team. Instead, they are expected to produce precision animal model resources and provide related services to the biomedical community, effectively acting as hubs that can supply models, methods, and possibly standardized pipelines that other investigators can use. The intent is to create preclinical pipelines that support scientific discovery, disease modeling, and the development and testing of interventions grounded in innovative animal models, with an emphasis on reproducibility and utility beyond a single disease area or project.

Although each Center will likely pursue a limited number of focused projects, the program expects the underlying platform to be flexible and multifaceted rather than narrowly bespoke. The pipelines and core model systems developed should be adjustable to accommodate a broad spectrum of diseases over time. This is important because the long-term vision is that these preclinical pipelines become part of the broader ecosystem that informs diagnostics, patient care decisions, and therapeutic development. Applicants are therefore expected to explain how their Center will help bridge that translational gap, even though clinical trials are explicitly not allowed under this FOA.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary health-related opportunity from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through NIH, using the U54 cooperative agreement mechanism, which typically implies substantial NIH programmatic involvement and coordination during the award. The opportunity listed an award ceiling of $1,250,000 and an expectation of 2 awards. Eligible applicants are broad and include many types of U.S. organizations and governments, such as public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofits (both 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3)), for-profit organizations (including small businesses), and various governmental and tribal entities. The FOA was created January 8, 2020, with an original closing date of March 24, 2020.

• The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Pilot Centers for Precision Disease Modeling (U54)(Clinical Trials Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.351.
• This funding opportunity was created on Jan 08, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 24, 2020. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $1,250,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for PAR 20 085

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