NIA R01: Drug Repositioning and Combination Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease

NIA R01: Drug Repositioning and Combination Therapy for Alzheimer's Disease

Funds researchers combining computational and experimental approaches to test repositioned drugs for Alzheimer's disease treatment through NIH R01 grants.

The National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the Department of Health and Human Services, administers this R01 grant through the PAR-25-374 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). It sits under the ACTDRx AD (Advancing Combination Therapy and Drug Repurposing for Alzheimer's Disease) program, a cross-disciplinary initiative using translational bioinformatics to identify drugs or drug combinations that may be effective for treating Alzheimer's disease (AD) and AD-related dementias (ADRD).

NIA intends to commit $6 million in FY 2026 to fund 4 to 5 awards. Application budgets are capped at $1 million in direct costs per year. The grant mechanism is R01, which typically supports up to 5 years of research. Indirect (facilities and administrative) costs are additional and subject to the applicant institution's negotiated rate. No matching funds are required.

Eligibility is broad: universities, nonprofits, for-profit organizations, and research institutions may all apply. Individual investigators are not eligible as stand-alone applicants — an institutional entity must submit. Clinical trials are not allowed under this NOFO (the title specifies "Clinical Trial Not Allowed"). Applications must combine computational and experimental approaches; purely computational or purely experimental proposals are out of scope.

The NOFO uses NIH standard R01 submission dates with multiple annual deadlines running through May 8, 2028, when the opportunity expires. The next upcoming deadline after June 23, 2026 is July 9, 2026. Applications are submitted via Grants.gov and reviewed by NIH study sections using peer review. Scoring uses the standard NIH 1–9 scale; lower scores are better. NIA program staff make funding decisions from the pool of scored applications.

Practical caveats: this NOFO explicitly excludes clinical trials — any application involving direct human subject interventions for treatment purposes will be rejected. Applicants must use an approved R01 application format and follow NIH's page limits and format requirements. Budget justification must support the direct cost cap of $1 million per year. Periods of performance beyond 5 years are not standard for R01 mechanisms.