Roadmap Transformative R01 Program (R01)
RFA-RM-08-029
 

The NIH has announced the new Transformative R01 (T-R01) Program, which highlights the need for research of the transition from acute to chronic pain (http://www.nih.gov/news/health/sep2008/od-09a.htm). The application due date of January 29, 2009.


http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-RM-08-029.html


Executive Summary

  • Purpose. As part of the NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research, the National Institutes of Health invites transformative Research Project Grant (R01) applications from institutions/organizations proposing exceptionally innovative, high risk, original and/or unconventional research with the potential to create new or challenge existing scientific paradigms. Projects must clearly demonstrate potential to produce a major impact in a broad area of biomedical or behavioral research.
     

  • Mechanism of Support. This FOA will utilize the NIH Research Project Grant (R01) award mechanism.
     

  • Funds Available and Anticipated Number of Awards. The NIH common fund intends to commit $25 million dollars in FY 2009 to fund up to 60 applications submitted in response to this FOA.
     

  • Budget and Project Period. Budget requests should be commensurate with project needs up to a five-year project period. There is no budget limit per proposal up to the budget cap for the program as a whole.


One area of highlighted need in the RFA is: “Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain”

More than 30 million Americans suffer from unrelieved chronic pain. Management strategies often fail, in part because an individual’s susceptibility to chronic pain is highly variable, the identification of those destined to transition from acute to chronic pain is difficult, and, once pain has become chronic, changes may have occurred that cannot be easily reversed. The lack of well defined phenotypes that reflect the cellular, molecular, genetic, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral changes that occur as individuals transition to chronic pain has been a major barrier to development of personalized approaches to pain intervention. For these reasons, T-R01 proposals are sought that will transform how we view the pain state of individuals and that will revolutionize the current empirically-based analgesic treatment approaches to ones based upon objective and predictive measures of an individual’s pain phenotype. It is anticipated that responsive studies will involve formation of innovative partnerships including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teams to adequately address the topic and experimental aims.