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National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) intends to reissue PAR-19-259 for new applications that will support investigator initiated Research Centers of Excellence that will investigate drug abuse and addiction research. Applicants must apply and undergo peer review.

The Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will provide support for research Centers that (1) conduct drug abuse and addiction research in any area of NIDA’s mission, (2) have outstanding innovative science, (3) are multidisciplinary, thematically integrated, synergistic, and (4) serve as national resource(s) to provide educational and outreach activities to drug abuse research communities, educational organizations, the general public, and policy makers in the NIDA research fields. It is expected that a Center will transform knowledge in the sciences it is studying. Incremental work should not be the focus of Center activities; rather, new and creative directions are required. The P50 Center of Excellence is expected to foster the career development and mentoring of new investigators who would be given meaningful roles to play in the Center projects. A goal of this program is to create NIDA Centers that are national community resources for furthering drug abuse research by sharing their findings, their data, and their resources as appropriate for researchers to use and build upon and to advance research in this field. 

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

The FOA is expected to be published by Winter 2022 with an expected application due date in Fall 2022.

This FOA will utilize the P50 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

NIDA supports research center grants to foster an innovative, synergistic and thematically coherent approach to drug abuse and addiction research and to enable studies that would not occur without the climate, facilities and/or interactive research resources that a research center can uniquely provide. NIDA encourages the application of multiple scientific perspectives and approaches to the problem of addiction to support the highest quality, multidisciplinary programs of innovative research. Through the Centers program, NIDA seeks to encourage outstanding scientists to bring a full range of expertise, approaches, technologies, and creativity to the study of problems related to drug abuse and addiction. Investigative efforts are expected to be broadly based and to encompass a variety of areas, including biological, biomedical, social, behavioral, and/or clinical sciences as well as dissemination sciences to address critical research issues.

NIDA Centers are expected to be scientifically innovative and provide the next generation of ideas and approaches. It is expected that a Center will transform knowledge in the sciences it is studying and be at the cutting edge of science. Incremental work, though valuable, should not be the focus of Center activities.

NIDA Centers are expected to be thematically coherent and demonstrate the highest caliber of multidisciplinary scientific work; there must be an overarching theme that integrates and focuses the Center. Each core and research component should relate to the overall Center theme and to other components of the Center to provide a synergy that leads to creative thinking, novel approaches, innovations, and highly significant findings. Interactions and integration of projects should be clearly evident, so that the Center does not appear to be a collection of independent research projects. There should be linkages among components that result in levels of productivity, quality, and progress that will exceed those expected from combining the individual components in an additive fashion. Linkages may be conceptual, spatial, and/or temporal. Interdependency of the scientific projects may allow for a variety of arrangements, for example, multiple research components sharing a common subject pool managed through a core or a common imaging protocol managed in a core to allow for comparability of data across research projects. The type of integration proposed may be different for different genres of science, including:conceptual integration or sharing of data, instruments, and other resources. Linkages should encourage cross-fertilization of ideas and interactions among investigators that are relevant to the theme. Multidisciplinary research activity is expected across a variety of disciplines or sub-disciplines to bring multiple scientific perspectives and approaches to a research area or question.

In addition, NIDA Research Centers are expected to serve as national research resources in the drug abuse research field to provide educational and outreach activities to drug abuse research communities, educational organizations, the general public, and policy makers in the NIDA research fields. They are expected to attract established and promising investigators into drug abuse research. The P50 Center application is expected to foster the career development and mentoring of new investigators and provide opportunities for effective dissemination of research findings.