CFF Path to a Cure Collaborative Research Grant

CFF PTAC Collaborative Research Grant

Provides research teams and institutions for CFF PTAC Collaborative Research Grant in biotechnology, synthetic biology, and medical technology.

The CFF Path to a Cure Collaborative Research Grant is the largest academic funding mechanism in the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation portfolio, providing up to $1 million per year in direct costs plus 12% indirect costs for three years to multi-investigator teams pursuing CFTR gene repair and replacement research. The program operates under an annual cycle with a November deadline; applications are submitted through awards.cff.org by 5 p.m. ET. This mechanism sits within CFF's $500 million PTAC initiative, launched in 2019 specifically to develop therapies for the approximately 10–15% of CF patients who cannot benefit from approved small-molecule modulators due to premature stop codon, splice site, or insertion/deletion mutations.

Eligible applicants are independent investigators at U.S. academic or research institutions working in collaborative, multi-investigator configurations. Industry applicants are not eligible for this academic mechanism and should engage CFF Mission Ventures for company-stage investment. The collaborative structure is a defining feature: at the funding level of up to $1 million per year, CFF expects proposals to integrate complementary expertise across multiple laboratories or institutions, reflecting the complexity of advancing gene repair and gene replacement approaches from bench through pre-clinical validation. The seven PTAC focus areas — airway cell biology, gene insertion technologies, safe harbor site evaluation, cell-specific delivery of nucleic acids, novel chemistries for large-component delivery, immune response assessment, and in vitro assay optimization — define the scientific scope.

Review is conducted by the PTAC Committee under a peer-review framework aligned with NIH norms, with notifications typically four to eight months after submission. The 12% indirect cost cap applies to the full direct cost base of up to $1 million per year, making total potential annual support approximately $1.12 million per year over three years. Investigators with existing PTAC Research Grants who have generated compelling preliminary data and identified multi-lab collaborators are well-positioned to compete for the Collaborative Grant as a step-up mechanism within the PTAC ladder.