Notice of Intent to Publish a Program Announcement to Support Research by Newly Independent Chemistry Investigators for the Study of Drug Abuse and Addiction

Notice Number: NOT-DA-07-028

Key Dates
Release Date: September 21, 2007

Issued by
National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), (http://www.nida.nih.gov)

The Early Career Award in Chemistry released last year as PAS-07-327 is designed to facilitate the entry of beginning investigators into basic chemistry research applied to drug abuse and addiction. For fiscal year 2008, NIDA estimates that $1,500,000 will be available to support 4-6 projects. Budgets for direct costs of up to $125,000 per year and a project duration of up to two years may be requested for a maximum of $250,000 direct costs over a two-year project period. NIDA recognizes the contributions that chemistry and related disciplines can make to understanding and treating drug abuse and addiction. In order to ensure the development and implementation of sustained, systematic applications of chemical expertise to drug abuse research, it is essential that opportunities for involvement in drug abuse research are made available to chemistry investigators who are at the early stages of establishing their independent research programs. Proposed principal investigators must be independent of a mentor at the time of award, but be at the beginning stages of his/her research career.

To be appropriate for an ECHEM (Early Career Award in Chemistry) award, research must be primarily focused on chemistry (e.g., synthetic, medicinal, computational, metabolic, natural products, targeted drug delivery, discovery of bioactive endogenous compounds). Thus, research on genetic, neural, or other biological processes would be appropriate for a ECHEM award only if its overall emphasis were on understanding the chemical mechanisms involved. Development of chemical probes or related technologies to investigate specific outcomes or structure-activity relationships (SAR) also would be appropriate.

Research proposed under ECHEM need not be conducted in drug-abusing populations or involve administration of drugs; however, the relevance of the research to drug abuse or drug addiction must be clearly established in the application. All areas of chemical/metabolic sciences research related to drug abuse are sought under this announcement.

Inquiries

Questions should be addressed to:

Rao Rapaka
Chief, Chemistry and Physiological Systems Research Branch
Division of Basic Neuroscience and Behavioral Research
National Institute on Drug Abuse
rrapaka@mail.nih.gov