Opportunity
Ultimately, our goal is to develop better biomarkers for PD diagnosis, disease progression, patient stratification, and/or pharmacodynamic readouts for clinical trials. Currently, many efforts are focusing on understanding the role of various cellular processes/pathways in PD and uncovering novel targets within these pathways for therapeutic development. As such, sensitive biomarker readouts for these targets and pathways will be critical for bridging the gap from basic to translational research/clinical trials. To accelerate therapeutic development through the development of companion outcome measures/assays, we are launching this RFA to support critical biomarker development aimed at (1) sensitive measurements of pathway activation/dysfunction and (2) improving technologies for analyzing
the target/pathway of interest.
MJFF considers priority pathways to include: mitochondrial function, lysosomal function, autophagy, inflammation, protein handling, protein trafficking, etc.
PROGRAM Priorities
Applications should focus on studies that achieve one or more of the following goals:
- Develop sensitive target or pathway-based outcome measures/assays for PD to aid diagnostic efforts, tracking disease progression, disease subtyping, patient stratification, pharmacodynamic readouts, or determination of therapeutic efficacy. Novel assay development could include:
- Developing outcome measures/assays to measure targets that are sensitive and specific for assessing PD-affected pathways.
- Developing/expanding multiplexed biochemical assays to assess multiple readouts of pathway function/dysfunction in PD.
- Developing outcome measures/assays to measure targets that are sensitive and specific for assessing PD-affected pathways.
- Optimize existing outcome measures/assays to assess PD-related pathways or pathway-based targets. Optimization efforts could include:
- Testing existing outcome measures/assays developed for other disease areas in PD to assist with patient stratification, assessing target/pathway engagement for clinical trials, or measuring efficacy of a PD therapeutic intervention.
- Adaptation of existing assays to different biological matrices to reduce invasiveness of the assay or improve assay sensitivity/specificity.
- Validating promising assays across various performance parameters (e.g., robustness, precision, trueness).
- Reformatting promising assays to ensure they use sustainable/renewable resources or bridging home-brew assays to the commercial space to ensure open accessibility.
- Testing existing outcome measures/assays developed for other disease areas in PD to assist with patient stratification, assessing target/pathway engagement for clinical trials, or measuring efficacy of a PD therapeutic intervention.
- Work in preclinical models and human biospecimens to develop translational biomarkers that can be assessed in Parkinson’s disease models as well as patient biospecimens using the same matrix and same assay technologies
Eligibility
Applications may be submitted by researchers or clinicians in:
• U.S. and non-U.S. biotechnology/pharmaceutical companies, or other publicly or privately held for-profit entities; and
• U.S. and non-U.S. public and private non-profit entities, such as universities, colleges, hospitals, laboratories, units of state and local governments and eligible agencies of the federal government.
• Post-doctoral fellows are not eligible to apply as principal investigators to this program.
Funding Available
Up to $300,000. Requested support should be commensurate with work proposed. These budgets include direct and indirect costs. MJFF policy is that no more than 15% (non-profit institutions) or 10% (for-profit organizations) of the budget may go to indirect costs.
Internal Contacts
For proposal development/substantive review, please contact Heloise Emdon.
Deadlines
| Faculty Deadline | Consult Heloise Emdon. |
| OVPRI Approval Form Deadline | April 16, 2020 |
| Submission to Sponsor | April 23, 2020 by 5 pm (Pre-Proposal) |
Submitting Your Application
- Step 1) Submit an internal Carleton Approval Form
Submit an internal Approval Form through our central awards management database CUResearch:
https://ovpri.research.carleton.ca/Romeo.Researcher/Administrator/Default.aspx
For a user’s guide on submitting an Approval Form, click here. - Step 2) Submit an external application to the granting agency
Submit an external application to the corresponding grant or award agency. For further details about funding categories, eligibility criteria and deadlines for this opportunity, click here.