Department of Defense Releases Pre-Announcement of FY 2021 Lupus Research Funding Opportunities
News release via the Department of Defense - Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program
The FY21 Defense Appropriations Act provides funding to the Department of Defense Lupus Research Program (LRP) to support the full spectrum of research projects or ideas that specifically focus on scientific and clinical lupus issues, which, if successfully addressed, have the potential to make a major impact in lupus research. As directed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Defense Health Agency J9, Research and Development Directorate manages the Defense Health Program (DHP) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. The managing agent for the anticipated Program Announcements/Funding Opportunities is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).
The LRP is providing the information in this pre-announcement to allow investigators time to plan and develop ideas for submission to the anticipated FY21 funding opportunities. This pre-announcement should not be construed as an obligation by the Government. The FY21 LRP Program Announcements and General Application Instructions for the following award mechanisms will be posted on the Grants.gov website. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when the Program Announcements are released.
Applications submitted to the FY21 LRP must address one or more of the following focus areas:
- Understanding how lupus disease heterogeneity impacts risk of disease, disease presentation, clinical course, and outcomes; using a diverse range of research disciplines including, but not limited to, biopsychosocial studies, personalized medicine, variation in treatment studies, health economics, socioeconomic studies, environmental studies, and epidemiological studies.
- Understanding mechanisms of lupus disease, using mechanistic studies, strategies, and technologies including, but not limited to, informative, rare patients.
- Determining the pathobiology of end organ injury lupus disease in target human tissues.
- Improving quality of life for individuals living with lupus including, but not limited to, addressing social determinants of health, access to healthcare resources, outcomes research, patient-reported outcomes, symptom and disease control, comparative effectiveness research, and issues and challenges that, when addressed, make day-to-day living with lupus easier and life more fulfilling.
- Understanding the underlying genetic and epigenetic components and gene-environment interactions of lupus and how they may relate to clinical disease characteristics, variations, and differences in response to therapies using functional genomic studies.
Applications submitted to the FY21 LRP Transformative Vision Award must address the following Focus Area:
- Design and implement an intervention including, at the individual and/or healthcare system level, improving quality of life for, but not limited to, access to healthcare resources, outcomes research, symptom and disease control, comparative effectiveness research, and issues and challenges that, when addressed, make day-to-day living with lupus easier and life more fulfilling.
A pre-application is required and must be submitted through the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) at https://eBRAP.org prior to the pre-application deadline. All applications must conform to the final Program Announcements and General Application Instructions that will be available for electronic downloading from the Grants.gov website. The application package containing the required forms for each award mechanism will also be found on Grants.gov. A listing of all CDMRP and other USAMRDC extramural funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420.
Submission deadlines are not available until the Program Announcements are released. For email notification when Program Announcements are released, subscribe to program-specific news and updates under “Email Subscriptions” on the eBRAP homepage at https://eBRAP.org. For more information about the LRP or other CDMRP-administered programs, please visit the CDMRP website.