Notice of Intent to Establish a New NIH Common Fund Program: Library of Integrated Network-Based Cellular Signatures (LINCS)

Notice Number: NOT-RM-10-002

Key Dates
Release Date: February 5, 2010

Issued by
National Institutes of Health (NIH), (http://www.nih.gov)

Purpose:

The purpose of this notice is to communicate the intent to establish a new program: the Library of Integrated Network-Based Cellular Signatures (LINCS).  The National Institutes of Health (NIH) intends to release three Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) to support establishment of LINCS.  This program is informed by a workshop “Cellular Functional Signatures Framework” that was held September 23-24, 2008, http://commonfund.nih.gov/lincs/meetings/cfsf092308/report.asp

The overall goal of the LINCS program is to generate a knowledge base that will support the high-throughput collection and integrative computational analysis of informative molecular activity and cellular feature signatures.  These data will be generated in response to a variety of perturbing agents, including siRNAs and small bioactive molecules, which are applied to a range of cell types. It is expected that successful applicants will have the capability of working with both siRNAs and small molecules, regardless of the research focus proposed in their application.

The goal of LINCS is not to address any one biological question but to develop a resource can be used broadly by the biomedical research community to address a wide variety of biological questions. Potential applications of LINCS knowledge base include but are not limited to: modeling of biological networks, elucidating how human genetic variants cause disease, classifying diseases by functional molecular criteria, developing novel molecular diagnostics, identification of novel use for existing bioactive small molecules, or identifying new therapeutic targets. 

The first FOA within the LINCS program, “Large Scale Production of Perturbagen-Induced Cellular Signatures”, is expected to be released by February 26, 2010 and will use the U54 grant mechanism. This FOA will seek to fund data production efforts that will produce a usable initial resource while addressing issues of optimization of methods, integration of data, and scalability. These data production efforts will interact with future computational tool development components of the LINCS program. 

NIH encourages applicants to this FOA to take advantage of a technical assistance conference call sponsored by LINCS program staff. The purpose of the conference call is to provide potential applicants with background information and respond to questions about the preparation of an application in response to the first FOA. The conference call will take place on March 31, 2010 from 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm EDT. Information about this Pre-Application Conference Call will be available in the upcoming FOA.   

The second two FOAs in the LINCS program are expected to be released by winter 2010 and to use the U01 grant mechanism.

This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop meaningful collaborations and responsive projects.

APPLICATIONS ARE NOT BEING SOLICITED AT THIS TIME.

Inquiries

Interested parties may contact:
Jennie Larkin
NIH Common Fund LINCS Program
Division of Cardiovascular Diseases
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
6701 Rockledge Dr.
Rockledge 2, room 8200
Bethesda, MD 20892-7940
Email: larkinj2@mail.nih.gov
Phone: 301-435-0513


Weekly TOC for this Announcement
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices


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