NLM is issuing this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) to highlight the urgent need for research on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) in relation to NLM’s strategic goal of fostering data driven research.

Research Objectives

In order to rapidly improve our understanding of the infection of SARS-CoV-2 and of COVID-19, NLM is encouraging the submission of applications for administrative supplements to active NLM R01 grants to address the following research areas of interest:

• Methods for mining clinical data that can be used to identify or predict presence of COVID-19 in biomedical phenotype data, or other relevant topics such as discovery of risks for infection by SARS-Cov-2 viruses, use of standard terminologies for these viruses in federated health data sets

• Public health surveillance methods that mine genomic, viromic, health data, environmental data and/or data from other pertinent sources such as social media, to identify spread and impact of SARS-Cov-2.

Applications are expected to focus on informatics and data science methods to help address the COVID-19 pandemic in a timely manner. Applications that are not responsive will be withdrawn without review.

Application and Submission Information

Applications for this initiative must be submitted using the following opportunity or its subsequent reissued equivalent.

• PA-18-591 - Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional)

Administrative supplement work that is proposed through PA-18-591 Administrative Supplements to Existing NIH Grants and Cooperative Agreements (Parent Admin Supp Clinical Trial Optional) must be within the general scope of the research that is already supported under the parent grant. The definition of scope can be found in the NIH Grants Policy Statement.

. The funding instrument, or activity code, will be the same as the parent award.

All instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide and PA-18-591 must be followed, with the following additions:

• Application Due Date(s) June 1, 2020, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization. This NOSI expires on June 2, 2020. An application submitted in response to this NOSI that is received on/after the expiration date will be withdrawn.
• All applications must be submitted electronically as follows:
  • Administrative supplement applications to PA-18-591 must use the application form package with the Competition ID of FORMS-E-ADMINSUPP-RESEARCH". This FOA will be reissued with a FORMS-F-ADMINSUPP-RESEARCH package on May 25, 2020. Submissions to PA-18-591 must be completed by June 25, 2020 (see NOT-OD-20-026 for details.) Submissions to the reissued FOA will be accepted on or after May 25, 2020 through the expiration date of this Notice. In addition, the process for Streamlined Submissions using the eRA Commons cannot be used for this initiative.
• IMPORTANT: For funding consideration, applicants must include NOT-LM-20-010 (without quotation marks) in the Agency Routing Identifier field (box 4B) of the SF424 R&R form. Applications without this information in box 4B will not be considered for this initiative.
• The project period of the supplement must not exceed one year.
• The parent award must be active when the application is submitted. The parent award cannot be in a no cost extension period.
• The Research Strategy section of the application is limited to 6 pages.
• Only existing awardees of NLM R01 program are eligible to apply.
• Application budgets cannot exceed $75,000 in total costs, inclusive of facilities and administration costs. Exceptions to this budget limit may be made with NLM pre-approval and will only be approved under the very rare circumstances where the work may immediately impact public health.
• Applicants are strongly encouraged to notify the NLM program contact for the parent award that a request has been submitted in response to this NOSI in order to facilitate efficient processing of the request.

Investigators planning to submit an application in response to this NOSI are strongly encouraged to contact and discuss their proposed research/aims with Program staff listed on this NOSI in advance of the due date to better determine appropriateness and interest of the NLM.