Notice Announcing a Limited Number of Travel Fellowship Awards for Innovative Analysis and Applications of NeuroLINCS Data

Notice Number: NOT-NS-16-004

Key Dates
Release Date: January 14, 2016

Related Announcements
None

Issued by
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

Purpose

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) is announcing the availability of a limited number of travel fellowship awards for innovative analysis and applications of NeuroLINCS data to new and existing research studies in neurological or related disorders. Travel fellowships are for undergraduate and graduate students currently enrolled at accredited U.S. educational institutions and postdoctoral fellows who are within three years of their terminal degree as of December 31, 2015. The travel fellowship will support attendance at the LINCS meeting to be held at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) on March 10-11, 2016. Travel fellowship awardees will present their NeuroLINCS data analysis approach and results at this meeting.

Background

In 2014, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded six cooperative agreement grants (U54) to support Data and Signature Generating Centers (DSGCs) which are part of the NIH Library of Integrated Network-based Cellular Signatures (LINCS) program. The LINCS program aims to catalog and analyze cellular function and molecular activity in response to perturbing agents, such as drugs, toxicants, and genetic factors, which can alter the cellular signature.

One of the DSGCs, NeuroLINCS, is focused on characterizing induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) lines and differentiated cell types derived from healthy (control) subjects and patients with neurological disorders such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). Technologies employed by the NeuroLINCS center include transcriptomics (RNA-Seq), proteomics (SWATH-MS), epigenomics (ATAC-Seq) and robotic imaging. The cell lines studied to date include iPSCs from healthy control subjects (0000iCTR, 0014iCTR, 0025iCRT, and 0083iCTR) and iPSC lines from ALS patients with a C9ORF72 pathogenic hexanucleotide repeat expansion (0028iALS, 0029iALS, 0030iALS, 0052iALS), and SMA patients with SMA type 1 disease (0032iSMA, 0077iSMA and 0083iSMA). Additional de-identified clinical information on the iPSC lines used by NeuroLINCS can be found on the Cedars-Sinai iPSC core site.

Data Available

As of January 3, 2016, three data releases (September, 2015, June 2015 and December 2015) are available from the NeuroLINCS center and include data from iPSC lines and motor neurons differentiated from several of these lines. Metadata describing experimental conditions for assays employed, cell line growth, motor neuron differentiation and quality assurance measures are also available. Tools and apps developed by the BD2k-LINCS data coordination and integration center are available to assist with analysis of NeuroLINCS data. 

How to Apply

Only domestic travel will be supported and only US citizens or permanent residents may apply. Applicants for travel fellowships should complete the online registration form and upload their proposal, at the time of registration. The proposal should include the applicants name, email address, Institutional affiliation, an abstract of the research proposal, a list of NeuroLINCS datasets to be used, and a research hypothesis and analysis strategy, by February 12, 2016. Awardees will be notified by February 19th, 2016. Please contact the program official listed below for further information.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

Margaret Sutherland, Ph.D.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Telephone: 301-496-5680
Email: sutherlandm@ninds.nih.gov