The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to establish state-of-the-art Tissue Mapping Centers (TMCs) to work within the Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet). The goal of the SenNet consortium is to identify and functionally characterize the heterogeneity of senescent cells across multiple tissues in human health, disease, and lifespan at single-cell resolution. Through collaborative efforts, the consortium will generate a multimodal, multidimensional Atlas of senescent cells in various human tissues; develop innovative tools and technologies to identify and characterize senescent cells; and aggregate data across the Network into a searchable Atlas of Cellular Senescence, ensure the utility of the database, and promote collaboration through Network engagement with the research community. The TMCs solicited through this RFA will generate the high-resolution, high-content, multiscale biomarkers and maps of cellular senescence across the lifespan and physiological states necessary to generate the Senescence Atlas. The SenNet is focused on healthy human tissues, and work in diseased tissue or animal models is acceptable only as long as it is used to support this overall goal. TMCs will be expected to integrate and optimize all parts of the data generation pipeline, from tissue collection and preservation through analyses at organ, tissue and single cell level using omics, imaging and other approaches, to data integration, analysis and interpretation.

This FOA is intended to: (1) increase our understanding of how music affects the brain when it is used therapeutically and/or (2) use that knowledge to better develop evidence-based music interventions to enhance health or treat specific diseases and disorders. Proposed R01 projects can investigate how music is processed by or modifies the brain, or how it affects specific biological functions during childhood development and learning, adulthood, and aging. Projects can also include preliminary interventions that provide a basis for therapeutic interventions. When appropriate, collaborations among basic researchers, technology developers, music intervention experts, or other clinical researchers are highly encouraged.

The purpose of the ASPIRE Collaborative Research Program is to facilitate translational and clinical research between NCATS intramural scientists and the extramural community to develop approaches that will enhance the ability to discover and develop new chemistries towards previously undrugged biological targets (i.e., biological targets with no known drugs to modulate their function) across many human diseases and conditions. NCATS intramural scientists have established an integrated NCATS ASPIRE platform consisting of physical and virtual modules for automated synthetic chemistry, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), engineering, informatics, and biological testing. The FOA will support intramural - extramural collaborations to develop additional physical modules that will enhance the platform’s capabilities. The anticipated outcome includes identification, design, synthesis, and validation of new chemical entities as starting points for drug development of novel targets, and the expansion of chemical space available for drug screening.

The purpose of this Program Announcement (PAR) is to enable analytical validation of strong candidate biomarkers for neurological diseases and conditions. Specifically, the goal of this PAR is to enable the rigorous validation of analytical methods for biomarker measurements, including evaluation of the detection method, its performance characteristics, and the optimal conditions that will generate reproducibility and accuracy consistent with FDA guidelines. This PAR assumes that 1) a candidate biomarker has already been identified, 2) detection method technology has already been developed, and 3) the research and/or clinical need and potential context of use has been identified.