COVID-19 Funding Opportunities

The Office of the Vice Provost for Research (VPR) has compiled a list of funding opportunities specific to COVID-19. This list will be updated as new opportunities arise.

The Fisher Center Discovery Program

Application Deadline: October 25, 2021

The Sherrilyn and Ken Fisher Center for Environmental Infectious Diseases is pleased to request applications for the Fisher Center Discovery Program. The program budget is up to $60,000.00 USD; a maximum of five projects will be awarded in November 2021.

Program Goals:

• Provide financial support for clinical or translational research related to environmental infectious diseases
  
• Provide resources for pilot or clinical studies that may lack traditional funding mechanisms.
  
• Promote novel, cross-disciplinary collaborative clinical research
  
• Facilitate the research careers of early career researchers (faculty or trainees)

Eligibility:

• All full-time faculty members of Johns Hopkins University, especially junior faculty, are encouraged to apply.
  
• Only Johns Hopkins University faculty members holding a terminal degree (MD, DO, PhD, PharmD, DVM, or equivalent) may serve as Principal Investigator (PI).
  
• Hopkins-affiliated postdoctoral fellows, house staff, medical school students, PhD students, graduate students, and undergraduate students may submit an FCDP application and be included as research team members on FCDP proposals. However, they may not be the PI. If the applicant is not a faculty member, the supporting faculty member PI is required to write a letter indicating review, mentorship responsibility, and approval of the project.

How to Apply:

• LOI form, Application form, and related documents available: https://hopkinsinfectiousdiseases.jhmi.edu/research/research-areas/environmental-id/fisher-center-discovery-program-grants/
  
• Applicants are strongly encourage to review the document Fisher Center Discovery Program Application Guidelines 2022 before completing the application and supporting documents.
  

For more information, call 443-287-4800 (ask for the Research Manager) or email fishercenter@jhmi.edu (preferred contact method).

Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) Challenge

No application deadline

The Michael J. Fox Foundation is sponsoring a $2 million prize to the first team to develop a viable selective alpha-synuclein PET tracer and agree to make that tracer available broadly.

The ability to image alpha-synuclein deposition in the brain would be a game-changing achievement for the Parkinson's disease (PD) field. The accumulation of aggregated alpha-synuclein is a pathological hallmark of PD and a priority target for drug development given its hypothesized contribution to neurodegeneration. In vivo imaging of alpha-synuclein pathology could be useful as a biomarker of the presence of disease and disease progression and as a pharmacodynamic tool for drug development. With this prize, the Foundation seeks to attract research teams and accelerate momentum to speed the development of such a tracer.

Contestants: Anyone is eligible for the prize who agrees to all contest rules. Contestants may be MJFF funded or not and can be from either academia or industry.

Contest rules:

1. Contestants must apply for the prize with pre-clinical and clinical data supporting the broad use of their alpha-synuclein radiotracer. Judges may ask for additional data, including but not limited to raw imaging data.
   
2. NOTE: All contestants must agree to make the winning radiotracer available for use by The Michael J. Fox Foundation and MJFF awardees through a nonexclusive license or other MJFF-approved mechanism.
   

Criteria for winning: The winning contestant must demonstrate that the radiotracer binds with relatively high selectivity to alpha-synuclein according to pre-specified criteria and must demonstrate proof-of-concept in human subjects, including people with Parkinson's disease and/or another synucleinopathy. See below for more details on submission requirements.

Timeline: There is no deadline for submissions. The $2 million award will be issued to the first contestant who submits compelling evidence of a viable selective tracer and agrees to its widespread use.

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