The purpose of this Notice of Special Interest (NOSI) is to announce that the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) encourages applications to advance research activities relevant to strategic priorities for the ALS research community identified in a recent planning effort of NINDS.
This notice applies to due dates on or after March 14, 2023, and subsequent receipt dates through June 24, 2024.
NOT-NS-23-062
The objective of this NOTICE is to advance research activities relevant to several of the strategic priorities:
Data Harmonization, Curation, and Analysis: This priority encourages the establishment of multi-modal data platforms of multi-dimensional and longitudinally collected clinical data to advance understanding of the molecular pathobiology of all forms of ALS, inform therapeutic development, and optimize clinical trials. This should include efforts to aggregate and harmonize available datasets and define standards for future data collections that will promote open data sharing, and ensure diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical ALS research.
Development of Biomarkers and Biomarker Signatures to Optimize Clinical Trials and Clinical Care Decisions: This priority encourages the development of biomarkers or biomarker signatures that will enable earlier diagnosis, patient stratification, and more efficient clinical trials to advance therapeutic development or be used in clinical practice to help guide clinical care decisions. This should include efforts to standardize collection methods and storage of materials for future biosample repositories.
Therapy Development for ALS: This priority encourages the advancement of therapy development for ALS. Exploratory and early-stage therapy development activities are supported, including 1) assay development and therapeutic agent identification for ALS, 2) development and validation of translationally relevant animal models and human/animal tissue ex vivo systems to support future ALS therapy development, and 3) ALS therapeutic agent characterization and in vivo efficacy studies. SBIR/STTR applicants may also pursue late-stage pre-clinical activities such as Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling studies.