Key Dates

RFA-OD-20-002 - Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers (P40) (Clinical Trials Not-Allowed)

Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives, Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP)

The Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) intends to reissue RFA-OD-20-002 Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers (P40)(Clinical Trials Not-Allowed).

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 in fiscal year 2023 with an expected application due date in fiscal year 2023.

This FOA will utilize the P40 activity code. Details of the planned FOA are provided below.

ORIP’s intent with the re-issuance funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to provide support for special colonies of laboratory animals, as well as other resources such as informatics tools, reagents, cultures (cells, tissues, and organs) and genetic stocks that serve the biomedical research community in a variety of research areas on a local, regional, and national basis. The goal of projects supported by this FOA will be to provide research resources that facilitate optimization and enhancement of scientific rigor, transparency, and experimental reproducibility of biomedical research. Proposed Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers must have broad application to multiple NIH Institutes or Centers (ICs) to align with the ORIP’s NIH-wide mission (https://orip.nih.gov/about-orip). This funding opportunity will be designed to support both continuation of existing resources and to develop new ones when appropriate. Prior to preparing an application, all applicants are strongly encouraged to consult with Scientific/Research staff to be advised on appropriateness of the intended resource plans for this program, competitiveness of a potential application, and ORIP's program priorities.

Special colonies of research animals are defined as animals that add value for biomedical research but are not generally available to investigators. Collecting, generating, and distributing such animals render these resources more accessible to the research community and eliminate costly redundant efforts. Other types of Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers provide informatics tools, data, analytical expertise, biological materials, or services that support research projects and that will enhance and expand an animal model system. Of special interest are resources that emphasize use of broadly applicable, interdisciplinary validation tools to increase predictability of animal models, such as approaches to compare and determine relatedness and usefulness of a disease associated network/pathway/physiological process between an animal model and a human patient. Applications that heavily focus on building and maintaining genomic or phenotyping databases for individual animal species will not be considered for funding. Details concerning current Division of Comparative Medicine (DCM) Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers can be found at the following link: https://orip.nih.gov/resource-directory.

Applications responding to the re-issuance FOA should:

• Demonstrate the need for the proposed resources or technologies/tools within broad biomedical research communities and the relevance of the resources and technologies/tools to a range of scientific disciplines.
• Address the impact, benefit, utilization, distribution, and accessibility of the proposed resources and technologies/tools to broad biomedical research areas supported by multiple NIH ICs. Describe plans to track potential impact of the proposed resources and technologies/tools.
• Describe potential sources of support for the resources and plans to ensure the continued availability of the resources to the research community after the ORIP-supported grant ends, such as plans to deposit the resources to stock centers or databases accessible to the research community.

Examples of projects that WILL NOT be supported under re-issuance FOA include those that:

• Focused on animal models and biomaterials that relate strictly to a specific disease or research area or are primarily relevant to the mission and programs of predominantly one NIH Institute or Center (IC). Examples of an inappropriate request are resources that exclusively maintain and distribute animals or biological materials for cancer, heart disease, or neurological disorders;
• Do not serve investigators on a national basis;
• Focus on distribution of wild-type animals and related biospecimens treated with diet, drug, toxin, infectious agents, or other environmental factors;
• Distribute wild-type animals and related biospecimens subjected to physical or surgical manipulations;
• Provide support for special colonies of threatened or endangered species;
• Function exclusively or predominantly as a repository of specific tissues and related bio-specimens (i.e., RNA extracts, processed tissues) from model organisms;
• Primarily involve human subjects, human cell lines, or related biological materials;

Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers should have the following characteristics:

• The Centers should serve the needs of investigators in a variety of research areas where work is sponsored by multiple NIH ICs
• The Centers must be available and utilized by investigators on a national basis;
• The Centers must ensure the quality and welfare of distributed animals and describe how their activities assist and promote optimization and enhancement of scientific rigor, transparency and experimental reproducibility of biomedical research;
• The Centers must have an Applied Research Component to generate new approaches or to enhance existing ones that will improve the resources and services provided to the.Hypothesis driven R21- or R01-like research is not considered applied research. The Applied Research Component may no more than 15 percent of the direct costs associated with the P40 grant;
• The Centers must have a Curation and Informatics component to support development and maintenance of comprise in-house data management systems, curate stocks of animals and biomaterials, and maintain a searchable web portal with an integrated client friendly request/ordering system and outreach presentations;
• The Institution submitting the P40 application must be committed to the Center being proposed. Evidence of such support must be provided. The application should include a letter of support from the Institution;
• The Centers required to develop approaches to maintain critical resources in reliable and cost-effective ways. Long-term preservation of the genetic stock of animal models is needed to ensure efficiency, rigor, and reproducibility in biomedical research. Cryopreservation of the germplasm should be considered when it is appropriate. In addition, the Center should have a disaster preparedness plan to minimize total loss of resources in the event of a catastrophic disaster, such as loss of power or potable water, fire, flooding, data breach, pandemic or public health emergency;
• Animal and Biological Material Resource Center grants must generate Program Income which will support efforts to enhance the volume of its operations. In general, this means that Renewal applications should recover in the initial year of the proposed grant cycle a greater percentage of operating costs from Program Income than for the last year of the previous grant cycle. Costs specifically associated with the establishment, improvement, or expansion of animal or material distributions and long-term resource maintenance should be recovered from users through a charge schedule acceptable to the NIH. Significant growth of Animal and Biological Material Resource Centers should result from Program Income and not from an ever-increasing P40 award.

Applications are not being solicited at this time.

Please direct all inquiries to:

Oleg Mirochnitchenko, PhD
Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP)
Telephone: 301-435-0748
Email: oleg.mirochnitchenko@nih.gov