NIH Research Project Grant

Funds work on treating and recovering from alcohol use disorder — new medicines, behavioural therapy, and the technology behind both. A trial is compulsory.

Funds novel ideas in cancer control and population science — statistics, epidemiology, survivorship, behaviour, care delivery, digital health, implementation.

Funds research into why most people with alcohol use disorder never get treated — access, appeal, cost, insurance, and getting proven methods used.

Funds a defined research project in the investigator's own area of expertise, through the announcement most NIH institutes keep permanently open.

Funds research into screening, decision-making and care coordination for older adults in populations that get worse healthcare.

Funds studies that watch patients rather than treat them, in bone, joint, rheumatic and skin disease. No intervention allowed.

Funds an addition to an existing NIH grant, to take a cancer biomarker assay from working in the lab to working in the clinic.

Funds work proving that animal cancer models actually represent human biology well enough to base clinical decisions on. No clinical trial allowed.

Funds molecular imaging that shows how inflammation and cancer interact inside a living body, rather than in a dish or a slide.

Funds non-drug interventions that improve sleep in populations facing health disparities — and tests sleep as a route to better health generally.

Funds full projects on what genetic risk factors for brain disorders actually do inside cells, synapses and circuits.

Funds work on how schizophrenia emerges and changes after 35 — the age group where most patients are and least research has gone.

Funds mechanistic work on how bariatric surgery changes a person's cancer risk — not on weight loss or diabetes.

Funds work on what causes agitation, apathy and psychosis in dementia, and on the treatment targets those mechanisms point at.

Funds work on how isolation and loneliness raise suicide risk in later life — the mechanisms, the interventions and the services.

Funds work on how GLP-1 and related drugs change cancer risk — raising it for some cancers, lowering it for others.

Funds basic research on how nerve agents, industrial chemicals and pesticides injure the nervous system, and where a countermeasure could interrupt it.

Funds a company and an academic group working as one team to turn an imaging, spectroscopy or data-science advance into something usable in the clinic.

Funds a Phase 0, I or II cancer trial that the investigator designed, inside one of six named National Cancer Institute programme areas.

Funds new analysis of clinical, genomic, environmental and registry data that already exists, to sharpen who is at risk of cancer and what happens to them.

Funds trials of practical ways to get cancer screening, follow-up and referral into communities that currently go without them.

Funds computational methods that curate biomedical data at scale, so datasets and models become usable faster than hand-curation allows.

Funds a test bed built on an existing digital mental health platform, to refine interventions fast and then run a definitive trial on them.

Funds full research on adopting, spreading and sustaining proven health interventions — and on restoring services after a disaster disrupts them.

Funds mechanistic work on the lasting harms cancer therapy causes, and on turning that understanding into ways to prevent them.

Funds the early end of drug discovery — building the assay, running the screen, and validating the hits into something worth chasing.

Funds an investigator's own cancer trial in early detection, screening, prevention, care delivery, quality of life or survivorship — not diagnosis or therapy.

Funds work combining imaging with liquid biopsy during cancer treatment, to see sooner whether it is working or resistance is emerging.

Funds a definitive trial of a mental health treatment or service in real community and practice settings, powered to settle the question.

Funds a pilot effectiveness study of a mental health intervention — and requires it to test whether the intervention engages its presumed mechanism.

Funds a confirmatory efficacy trial of a non-drug treatment or preventive intervention for mental disorders, in adults or children.

Funds functional testing of genetic variants linked to congenital anomalies, to separate the ones that matter from the ones that merely appear.

Funds a project that develops a biomedical research technology and only that — no biological question attached.

Funds a pilot trial of treatment or services for the phase after acute mental health care — holding gains, managing what is left, preventing relapse.

Funds a fully powered trial of post-acute mental health treatment or services, testing not just whether it works but how and for whom.

Funds research on awareness, social norms, policy and whole-population interventions that reduce the cancer risk that comes from drinking.

Funds studies of how conditions found by newborn screening unfold — the sequence and timing of symptoms, and what changes the course.

Funds computational genomics work — new analytical methods, early-stage tools, or hardening software the genomics community already relies on.

Funds informatics tools that take a person's own health data and hand back a risk assessment they can understand and do something about.

Funds basic mechanistic research into the biological and genetic causes of cancer health disparities — and into building the tools that research needs.

Funds theory and method development on how genetic and non-genetic factors together produce variation in complex traits, tested against large existing datasets.

Funds new screening tests or treatments for serious newborn conditions — including ones not yet on any screening panel.

Funds the multisite feasibility trial that has to happen before a full-scale trial of a complementary or integrative therapy can be designed.

Funds a fully powered trial of a complementary or integrative therapy delivered entirely at a distance, with no in-person contact at any point.

Funds the mid-phase study that settles a natural product's dose, formulation or responder group before anyone commits to a multi-site efficacy trial.

Funds new or newly applied ways to measure brain activity, connectivity or genomics across the lifespan, to predict what happens later.

Funds translational work on the neurobiology behind mood and psychotic symptoms during the menopause transition, aimed at treatment targets.

Funds research into delivering better mental health services where no clinical trial is involved — the route for observational and analytic work.

Funds a genuinely new brain stimulation device for mental health, or a hardware or software change that substantially improves an approved one.

Funds a full study of whether family navigation diversion models work, how they are implemented, and which configuration is best.

Funds studies using electrodes already implanted in people to record and stimulate directly, answering mental health questions no scan can reach.

Funds research testing interventions that reduce disparities in liver disease and liver cancer among populations who experience them most.

Funds research on getting proven mental health care to young people in rural areas, inner cities and unstable housing, past waiting lists and staff shortages.

Funds research on family-level risk and protective factors, and family-based interventions, to reduce disparities in minority health.

Funds an early-stage investigator's pivot into a genuinely new research direction, for a project with no preliminary data at all.

Funds advanced preclinical work maturing a nanoparticle-based cancer diagnostic or therapeutic toward the National Cancer Institute's own translation pipeline.

Funds academic-industry partnerships that turn a lab discovery into a working diagnostic or treatment tool, without a clinical trial attached.

Funds research into how the immune system forms in the womb, infancy and early childhood, including under HIV or antiretroviral exposure.

Funds a full research project on the ethics, law and social effects of human genetics — and refuses to review an application with no diverse-perspectives plan.

Funds a full research project on the Native American health initiative that a same-day companion notice describes in detail.

Funds a forward-running test of a better way to catch and refer risky drinking, smoking and drug use among adults who fall through the usual net.

Funds new bioinformatics, computational biology, or AI methods that turn messy biomedical datasets into usable knowledge.

Funds building and testing clinical informatics tools that turn health records, notes, and images into better care.

Funds small multidisciplinary teams applying bioengineering to a specific biomedical, translational or clinical problem, up to $500,000.

Funds basic research into how public-health chemical threats injure skin, aiming at future broad-spectrum countermeasures.

Funds optimizing an already-validated hit compound into an in vivo chemical probe for a novel brain target.

Funds basic and early translational research on non-cancerous blood disorders, in topics three institutes refresh every year.

Funds research where HIV and drug use intersect. Preliminary data are compulsory, and the work must sit on NIH's published HIV priorities.

Funds basic research on the harm caused by a single exposure to ultra-potent synthetic opioids, including the effects that appear later.

Funds new analysis of existing social, behavioral, administrative and neuroimaging data on drug use, prevention, and related health services.

Funds computational tools, models and theories for understanding brain circuits, built to be shared broadly with the research community.

Funds translational research turning basic findings into clinical tools for communication disorders, with practical clinical impact required.

Funds building the imaging that can finally show hair cells and membranes inside a living human ear. A clinical trial is optional.

Funds new non-invasive or minimally invasive ways to image the human sense of smell, from nose to brain.

Funds a first independent research project for exceptionally promising early-career investigators working anywhere in genomics.

Funds new genetic or non-genetic tools that deliver genes, proteins or chemicals to specific brain cells or circuits, with validation built in.

Funds work on the methodological problems that make trials of rapid-acting psychotropic drugs hard to interpret, and on sustaining the treatment afterwards.

Funds practice-relevant research on delivering and sustaining proven mental health care for older adults living with serious mental illness.

Funds bold, unconventional Down syndrome research that could open an entirely new scientific or clinical direction.