Targeted RFP – Biomedical Research: Establishment of a Research Consortium to Explore the Barriers to and Potential for Eradication of HIV Infection
Application Deadline: March 25, 2010
Available Support
amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, is pleased to announce plans to establish and support a consortium—consisting of several collaborations—of biomedical researchers to explore the barriers to and potential for eradicating HIV infection.
Funding will be available for:
Collaborations—Each collaboration is funded for a total of up to $300,000 for direct costs plus up to 20 percent for indirect costs. The performance period for collaborations funded under this RFP will be for one year starting May 1, 2010, and may be renewable for subsequent years. Each collaboration must consist of at least two interrelated research projects and involve at least two independent, faculty-level researchers.
Background and Areas of Interest
amfAR's research program is driven by the Foundation's mission to end the global AIDS epidemic through innovative research. amfAR plays a uniquely important role in AIDS research, identifying critical gaps in our knowledge of HIV and AIDS and supporting groundbreaking studies that often lack the preliminary data required by more traditional funders. The Foundation's research program focuses on efforts to prevent HIV infection among vulnerable populations and to improve treatment, with the ultimate goal of eradicating the virus in people living with HIV infection.
This RFP solicits proposals for collaborations to explore the obstacles to and strategies for eradicating HIV infection. Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has significantly improved the health of individuals infected with HIV-1. However, if therapy is interrupted, there is a rapid resumption of viral replication. Understanding the mechanisms by which the virus is able to persist in the face of therapy is necessary in order to identify strategies that may interrupt viral persistence and ultimately lead to viral eradication. amfAR wishes to establish a consortium consisting of several collaborations. The purpose of the consortium is to explore barriers to and the potential for the eradication of HIV infection as a condition requiring medical treatment, i.e., a sterilizing or functional cure.
amfAR would like to fund one collaboration in each of the following three areas. Some, but not all, potential topics of interest within each of the three collaboration areas are listed:
Sterilizing cure: i.e., eliminating HIV from the body of an infected person
Gene therapy techniques/vectors
"Shock and kill” strategies
Methods to identify and specifically target infected cells
Replication and/or exploration of factors contributing to the Berlin patient outcome
Functional cure: i.e., achieving a state of persistent HIV infection without the need for medical treatment
What can be learned from specific populations of interest such as elite controllers, long-term non-progressors, and patients who initiate therapy during acute infection? How can this information be applied to devising a functional cure?
What are the immune or other implications of persistent infection, even in the absence of disease?
Characterizing viral reservoirs:
Which cells under which conditions contribute which roles to the reservoir(s)?
Mechanisms for reservoir maintenance
Assays to measure perturbation of reservoir
Latency and the extent to which it exists in different cell types
Nature and origin of blips
Animal models
Definitions and exclusions
Each collaboration must consist of at least two interrelated research projects and involve at least two independent, faculty-level researchers. All principal and collaborating investigators must be doctoral level. Each collaboration must have access to and describe how they would use patients or clinical samples as part of their research plan.
Any collaboration participant, i.e., principal or collaborating investigator, key personnel (including postdoctoral researchers and their mentors), and consultants, may be part of only one application.
Special notes
Please note that this RFP is differs from recent ones in the following ways:
Grants will be awarded to support collaborations, not individual researchers.
The direct cost maximum is $300,000.
Funding may be renewable.
Pre-submission forms and letters of intent are not required.
Eligibility and Qualifications
Collaborative research grants are awarded to nonprofit institutions worldwide to support investigator-led projects approved by the Foundation. They are not awarded to for-profit entities or to individuals. With the exception of colleges or universities, governmental units or agencies are not eligible to receive funding through grants made under this RFP. The recipient organization will be legally and financially responsible for the use of grant funds.
Principal and collaborating investigators must be doctoral-level researchers and hold a faculty-level (or equivalent) position.
The principal investigator must be affiliated with the applicant organization. The principal investigator will be expected to actively lead one of the component projects; actively participate in the development, implementation, and analysis of the project as whole; and be responsible for coordinating the preparation and submission of required progress reports.
Collaborating investigators may be affiliated with any research organization that is not a governmental unit or agency. Collaborating investigators are expected to actively lead a component project and play an active role in the development, implementation, and analysis of the project as a whole.
Forms, Instructions, and Deadlines
The preferred method for obtaining application forms is to e-mail amfAR at grants@amfAR.org. We will send a complete set of forms and instructions.
Completed applications are to be e-mailed to grantapps@amfar.org no later than March 25, 5:00 p.m. EDT.
Please make sure the body of the e-mail includes the principal investigator’s name and contact information.
Important Notice
Pre-submission notice and letters of intent are NOT required under this RFP. Applications that are received late, are incomplete, or exceed word limitations will not be accepted for review. Fax submissions are not accepted.
The Research Plan consists of separate research plans of no more than 2,500 words for each of the component projects covering background and rationale, preliminary studies, specific aims, experimental design, procedures, and data analysis to be used. There are no forms for the research plan; formatting and submission requirements are detailed in the application instructions.
Send one hard copy of the Collaboration Information Form (bearing original signatures) to:
amfAR Grants
120 Wall Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10005-3908, USA
If you are not able to download the forms or have questions about the application requirements, please e-mail grants@amfar.org or telephone 212-806-1752.
Submission of an application is not a guarantee of funding. The review and approval process is highly competitive.
