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The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement is to solicit applications to develop, test, and implement, novel, multi-level, culturally appropriate interventions and/or adapt, test and evaluate efficacy and effectiveness of existing interventions in NIH designated populations that disproportionately experience negative health outcomes (HDP). Desired outcomes of these interventions include reduction of pain and pain-related symptoms and improvement in patient satisfaction, and overall health outcomes, including function and quality of life. Interventions that target HDPs with chronic pain in addition to at least one comorbid condition (OUD, mental health disorders and/or chronic health conditions) are of the highest priority.

NCATS is issuing this FOA in response to the declared public health emergency issued by the Secretary, HHS. Please see Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the Opioid Crisis as renewed in Renewal of the Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the Continued Consequences of the Opioid Crisis. The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to support early-stage research projects focusing on the identification of new druggable targets for pain, opioid use disorder and/or overdose within the understudied druggable proteome. This FOA is part of the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long Term (HEAL) initiative to accelerate the development of novel medications to treat all aspects of the opioid addiction cycle, including progression to chronic use, withdrawal symptoms, craving, relapse, and overdose.

NCATS is issuing this FOA in response to the declared public health emergency issued by the Secretary, HHS. Please see Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the Opioid Crisis as renewed in Renewal of the Determination that a Public Health Emergency Exists Nationwide as the Result of the Continued Consequences of the Opioid Crisis. The Helping End Addiction Long-Term (HEAL) New Innovator Award supports a postdoctoral or newly independent Early Stage Investigator of exceptional creativity who proposes novel, original and insightful research concepts with the potential to produce a major impact, test scientific paradigms, or advance key concepts on broad, important problems in biomedical research related to pain, opioid use disorder (OUD), and/or overdose (OD). Applications proposing unexpected convergence of disciplines, new scientific directions, or the use of novel methodologies are encouraged.

This FOA will support early career clinical pain scientists development as a means to enhance the clinical pain research workforce. Under this award, promising early-career clinician-scientists will have access to high-quality mentorship that will promote their successful transition to independent research careers in academic settings. Clinicians in their last year of residency/fellowship/post-doctoral training, or in their first year of an independent faculty position, can apply to the awarded HCPDP national program for support, which is intended to begin during their first or second faculty year. The program will primarily support clinicians who leave their training institution for a faculty position at another institution. Under some circumstances a candidate who remains at their residency institution for their faculty position may be supported. The awarded HCPDP national program will provide the selected scholars with the experience, research support, and protected time for research and funding necessary to initiate a sustainable research program. In addition, the awarded HCPDP national program will create a National Advisory Committee (NAC) whereby scholars will have the opportunity to interact with both experienced pain researchers and pain patients. The FOA will develop a national network of mentors and scholars.

There is an urgent need for more research to establish best practices in the pain management field, however, there is a limited workforce pipeline of pain researchers to meet NIHs long-term goals of providing effective non-opioid options for the treatment of pain conditions and better pain management overall. The Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) has identified the workforce problem as a barrier for new pain research, and has identified factors that contributed to it such as barriers to entry into the field of pain research that have constricted growth high departure rate of senior investigators and mentors. The IPRCC also identified a need for more structured opportunities for early-stage investigators to learn from and be mentored by experienced investigators. The pain management field has further recognized that basic, translational, and clinical researchers do not regularly collaborate when developing grant applications. If pain management researchers across all disciplines were to work together, it would enhance the innovation, relevance, and practical application of pain management research. To support the NIH HEAL Initiatives response supporting new investigators, promoting multidisciplinary collaborations among pain researchers, and identifying innovate treatments to manage pain, this FOA invites applications for the Coordinating Center for National Pain Scientists (CCNPS). The CCNPS will be a central facilitator for integrating training and mentoring across a network of mentors and early-stage investigators funded by NIH (e.g., NIH trainees, NIH fellows, and Career Development Awardees). The main purpose of the CCNPS is to enhance the training experience of new pain researchers across the continuum of basic, translational, and clinical research and create a vast network of NIH-funded pain researchers to promote multidisciplinary collaborations in pain research. The CCNPS will create and run a coordination center to connect NIH-fund

The purpose of the Research Enhancement Award Program (REAP) for Health Professional Schools and Graduate Schools is to support small scale research grants at institutions that do not receive substantial funding from the NIH, with an emphasis on providing biomedical research experiences primarily for health professional, undergraduate and graduate students and enhancing the research environment at applicant institutions.

The purpose of the Research Enhancement Award Program (REAP) for Health Professional Schools and Graduate Schools is to stimulate basic and clinical research in educational institutions that provide baccalaureate or advanced degrees for a significant number of the Nation's research scientists, but that have not been major recipients of NIH support. REAP grants create opportunities for scientists and institutions otherwise unlikely to participate extensively in NIH research programs to contribute to the Nation's biomedical and behavioral research effort. REAP grants are intended to support small-scale research projects proposed by faculty members of eligible, domestic institutions, to expose undergraduate and/or graduate students at health professional schools or graduate schools to meritorious research projects, and to strengthen the research environment of the applicant institution. Eligible institutions must award NIH-relevant baccalaureate or advanced degrees in health professions and have received less than $6 million per year of NIH support (total costs) in 4 of the last 7 fiscal years. In this FOA, a college is a stand-alone entity and not a component of a university system.

HEAL Initiative: Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain Consortium (RE-JOIN) (UC2 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) - The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement is to solicit cooperative agreement applications to support interdisciplinary teams that will work together to form the Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain Consortium (RE-JOIN). The goal of RE-JOIN will be to define the innervation of the different tissues, which collectively form the joints, by sensory neurons that mediate the sensation of pain. Knowledge about the types and distribution of neurites in joint tissues will facilitate the identification of key receptors and mediators that induce pain by activating specific sensory neurons. These mediators or their receptors will provide novel targets for reducing pain.

The aim of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI)is to advance basic and clinical research on the causes and consequences of sleep deficiency and circadian clock dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Alzheimers disease-related dementias (ADRD), and the roles of sleep and the circadian clock as modifiers of the onset and progression of neurodegeneration.

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to promote the discovery and validation of novel therapeutic targets to facilitate the development of pain therapeutics. Specifically, the focus of this FOA is on the basic science discovery of targets in the peripheral nervous system, central nervous system, immune system or other tissues in the body that can be used to develop treatments that have minimal side effects and little to no abuse/addiction liability. Research supported by this FOA must include rigorous validation studies to demonstrate the robustness of the target as a pain treatment target. This will lower the risk of adopting the target in translational projects to develop small molecules, biologics, natural substances, or devices that interact with this target for new pain treatments. Translational research to develop new medical devices are not the focus of this FOA. Basic science studies of pain and related systems in the body are responsive to this FOA and are encouraged in the context of novel pain therapeutic target discovery. This FOA is not specific for any one or group of pain conditions. Projects to identify novel targets for acute pain, chronic pain, migraine, other headache disorders, osteoarthritis, diabetic neuropathy, chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, sickle-cell pain, post stroke pain, etc. will be considered. Projects to identify novel targets for a combination of chronic overlapping pain conditions or for specific pathological conditions will be considered. Projects that seek to identify novel targets in specific populations such as women, children, older adults or other underrepresented groups will also be responsive to this FOA.