HEAL Initiative Integrated Basic and Clinical Team-based Research in Pain (RM1 Clinical Trial Optional)

Multiple application deadlines. Please refer to the FOA for application due dates.

This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is designed to support integrated efforts of three or more (up to six) PDs/PIs to pursue bold, impactful, and challenging research in basic and clinical pain domains to understand the biology of specific human pain conditions as well as pain associated with various diseases/disorders, including mechanistic underpinning of heterogeneity and stratification of patients with specific pain conditions and co-morbidities. The research approach should be interdisciplinary in nature, and the research teams are expected to establish a common goal that requires collaboration, synergy, and managed team interactions. Proposed research should not represent a collection of individual efforts or parallel projects. Proposed research should support a cohesive, single, well-integrated research plan with a singular focus, one set of aims, and a budget without subprojects. Teams must leverage appropriate multi-disciplinary expertise to develop new principles and methods for experimentation, analysis, and interpretation. Teams are encouraged to consider transformative objectives with defined 5-year outcomes that will produce major advances in the understanding of human pain conditions and are likely to improve strategies for effective management of human pain.

National Cancer Institute (NCI)

NCI is particularly interested in applications focusing on understanding the underlying mechanisms, identifying predictive biomarkers, and stratification of patients, and understanding the impact of co-morbidities associated with cancer- or cancer-treatment related pain. Pain conditions of interest include, but are not limited to: bone cancer pain, oral cancer pain, metastasis-related pain, post-surgical pain, radiation pain, aromatase inhibitor-induced arthralgia, chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, and immunotherapy-related pain. An ideal team would include basic scientists and clinicians across multiple fields (i.e. oncology, radiology, neurology, palliative care, etc…).