I was recently alerted to a new NIH funding opportunity described in this GenomeWeb News post which I thought would be of interest to the American Biotechnologist audience.
Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) Number PA-11-215 is a Small Business Innovation Research (STTR) grant for research involved in developing new technology for proteomics and glycomics. The funding opportunity was originally issued in April 2006 as PA-04-089 and has undergone several revisions in the intervening years.
Interestingly, despite major advances in the field of proteomics since 2006, there are many similarities in the language of the original announcement and the most recent version. In particular, I was struck by the comparability of the following two blurbs:
From 2006:
Technologies and methods remain largely inadequate to address the majority of meaningful biological problems, particularly with respect to quantitative and real time measurements.
From 2011:
Despite explosive growth in both academic and commercial efforts, concrete technical capabilities are far from adequate to realize this promise. Proteomics technologies and methods in the three broad, interacting domains of biology, analytical chemistry, and informatics are still largely inadequate to address the bulk of challenging biological problems.
I guess that one lesson to be learned from this comparison is that despite rapid techonological advances, lots of work remains to be done!
The NIH will provide up to $350,000 for Phase I and $600,000 for Phase II grants for projects addressing an important problem or a critical barrier to progress in the field of proteomics and glycomics that have commercial potential to lead to a marketable product, process or service.
The earliest submission date for the grant is July 5, 2011 and the grant expires on May 8, 2014. Interested applicants should visit the relevant NIH project announcement page.
Tags: glycomics, NIH, Proteomics