The FY20 Defense Appropriations Act provides $40 million (M) to the Department of Defense Spinal Cord Injury Research Program (SCIRP) to support innovative, high-impact spinal cord injury (SCI) research1. As directed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, the Defense Health Agency J9, Research and Development Directorate manages the Defense Health Program (DHP) Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. The managing agent for the anticipated Program Announcements/Funding Opportunities is the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).
The SCIRP is providing the information in this pre-announcement to allow investigators time to plan and develop ideas for submission to the anticipated FY20 funding opportunity. This pre-announcement should not be construed as an obligation by the Government. The FY20 SCIRP Program Announcements and General Application Instructions for the following award mechanisms will be posted on the Grants.gov website. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when the Program Announcements are released.
Applications submitted to the FY20 SCIRP must address one or more of the following focus areas:
- Preserving and protecting spinal cord tissue at time of injury for improved neurologic outcomes
- Identifying and validating biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and for evaluation of treatment efficacies (Transnational Research Award and Investigator-Initiated Research Award only)
- Bowel, genitourinary, cardiopulmonary dysfunction, and neuropathic pain
- Psychosocial issues relevant to people with SCI, their families, and/or their care partners
- Rehabilitation and regeneration—maximizing the function of the residual neural circuitry, including harnessing neuroplasticity and recovery to improve function after SCI
https://cdmrp.army.mil/pubs/press/2020/20scirppreann
A pre-application is required and must be submitted through the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) at https://eBRAP.org prior to the pre-application deadline. All applications must conform to the final Program Announcements and General Application Instructions that will be available for electronic downloading from the Grants.gov website. The application package containing the required forms for each award mechanism will also be found on Grants.gov. A listing of all CDMRP and other USAMRDC extramural funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420.
Submission deadlines are not available until the Program Announcements are released. For email notification when Program Announcements are released, subscribe to program-specific news and updates under “Email Subscriptions” on the eBRAP homepage at https://eBRAP.org. For more information about the SCIRP or other CDMRP-administered programs, please visit the CDMRP website (https://cdmrp.army.mil).