NIH STTR

NIH STTR — Receipt (First Post-Reauthorization

Supports small businesses partnering with research institutions on collaborative development pathways.

The NIH Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program funds joint R&D partnerships between US small businesses and US research institutions — universities, federal laboratories, or nonprofit research organizations — to accelerate commercialization of biomedical innovations. Like SBIR, STTR was reauthorized on April 13, 2026 after a program lapse; no active STTR NOFOs exist as of May 2026. The next standard receipt date is September 5, 2026, when the program resumes its three-cycle annual schedule (September 5, January 5, April 5). Phase I applications use activity code R41; Phase II and Fast-Track use R42. The reissued omnibus will cover all participating NIH Institutes and Centers.

Under the most recently expired omnibus PA-24-245, Phase I total support was capped at $306,872 and Phase II at $2,045,816 per award, and those figures are expected to carry forward or increase modestly in the new omnibus. Eligibility requires that the lead applicant be a US-registered for-profit small business of 500 or fewer employees. The key STTR structural requirement — absent in SBIR — is a formal, written collaboration agreement with a US research institution that must perform a minimum specified share of the funded work. This partnership requirement makes STTR the preferred mechanism when the core technology originates in an academic laboratory.

The STTR program spans the same NIH IC participants as SBIR, covering cancer, neuroscience, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, behavioral health, imaging, genomics, and other biomedical domains administered through participating ICs including NCI, NINDS, NHLBI, NIAID, NIDDK, and approximately 20 others. Review is conducted by IC-assigned study sections. Applicants should monitor simpler.grants.gov for the September 2026 omnibus posting. Teams planning to apply should establish the required institutional collaboration agreement well in advance of the receipt date, as institutional sign-off is mandatory before submission.