NIH Funds High-Risk, High-Reward Research

The NIH's Common Fund has awarded 85 grants totaling $141 million to U.S. scientists pursuing high-risk, high-reward research that might lead to breakthroughs in cancer care and other areas of medicine.

The awards provide 5 years of funding, ranging from approximately $250,000 to $1.5 million in direct costs per year, to individual investigators or teams working in areas deemed highly innovative or potentially groundbreaking. The program is intended to free talented researchers from the restrictions of traditional NIH Research Project Grants (RO1), which require extensive preliminary data and detailed annual budgets.

“The awards give investigators the flexibility to alter the direction of their research as they progress,” says Ravi Basavappa, PhD, NIH Common Fund program director, who oversees the awards. “Our reviewers looked for projects with unusually broad and deep impact with the potential to inspire new ways of thinking about major challenges in important areas of research.”

Denise Montell, PhD, professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of 10 scientists selected for the prestigious Pioneer award, which provides $500,000 per year. Montell's lab together with collaborators discovered that many different types of cells induced to undergo apoptosis are capable of returning to life—a process they call anastasis (Greek for “rising up”)—which could explain why some patients with cancer develop resistance to therapy or recurrences of their tumors following chemotherapy.

“It's possible that this intrinsic ability of cancer cells to bounce back from the brink of death may contribute to patients' relapses,” she says. “If we can figure out at a molecular level what's driving this recovery and gain control over it, we may be able to develop a treatment that would either prevent those cells from bouncing back or stimulate the revival mechanism so that beneficial cells survive better.”

Michelle Janelsins, PhD, recipient of one of 50 New Innovator awards, which provide $300,000 per year for early-career scientists who have not yet received an RO1 grant, is investigating the role of inflammation in chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment. She aims to identify inflammatory markers tied to cognitive problems in chemotherapy mouse models and then look for correlations in patients undergoing chemotherapy.

“If there is an increase in inflammatory markers directly related to cognition, we might be able to develop an intervention, such as physical activity, that dampens levels of proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines that could be related to toxicity,” says Janelsins. “If an intervention proves to be beneficial in mouse models, we can fine-tune the recommended amount and intensity before we move into a clinical study.”

The grants also included eight Transformative Research awards, which support interdisciplinary projects by individuals or teams, and 17 Early Independence awards, which allow junior scientists to skip traditional postdoctoral training and move directly into independent research positions.

“Although all of the projects have inherent risk, we are mitigating that risk by supporting researchers of unusual ability,” says Basavappa. “These researchers have track records of exceptional creativity, suggesting they are capable of overcoming significant conceptual and technical hurdles.”