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American Heart Association / Allen Initiative in Brain Health and Cognitive Impairment
Sponsor: American Heart Association and Frontiers Group 		Closing Date: 06-Jul-2018
The American Heart Association and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group (Frontiers Group), together with additional contributors, are funding the American Heart Association / Allen Initiative in Brain Health and Cognitive Impairment to bring together scientists focusing on cerebrovascular issues and neurodegenerative diseases. The initiative aims to discover and fund highly-promising teams of bioscience investigators pursuing creative, transformative ideas with the potential to move brain health and cognitive impairment science forward, and will grant one or more competitive basic science research awards of up to USD $43 million over eight years.

Aims
The scientific focus is to fund large-scale integrated research that will identify novel, early, actionable, biological/mechanistic contributors to age-related cognitive impairment. The following topics, with illustrative examples, are of particular interest to the initiative:
• The neurovascular unit (NVU) in relation to cognitive function, for example: endothelial dysfunction, capillary rarefaction, exosomes
• Proteostasis in relation to cognitive function, for example: novel clearance pathways beyond intracellular protein trafficking (such as trans-vascular, peri-vascular, para-vascular)
• Inflammation in vascular and neural systems in relation to aging/cognitive function, for example: role(s) of monocytes and lymphocytes
• Role of astrocytes and microglia and their effects on cognitive function, for example: clearance of metabolic products and neural network signaling
• DNA repair and epigenetic aging mechanisms in vascular and neural systems.

Eligibility
Team lead applicants are expected to demonstrate the following attributes:
• Ph.D. and/or M.D. (or the equivalent).
• Faculty appointment at an eligible nonprofit institution in the U.S. or equivalent faculty position at a foreign University that meets foreign equivalency determinants for a non-profit in the United States. Note that UQ meets this requirement.
• Ability to develop new tools and methods that support creative experimental approaches to questions, utilizing techniques from other disciplines, if appropriate.
• Creativity in their scientific ideas and commitment to take risks on forward-looking concepts of major scientific impact.

Funding
Awards are for an eight (8) year period; first stage applicants should propose a scope of research that could be completed at a minimum level of USD $15 million or larger. The Award budget can cover costs such as PI and any co-PI salary/fringe; salaries/fringe of lab personnel; other expenses such as laboratory supplies; equipment; animal costs; human subject recruitment/reimbursement; travel; publication costs; and up to 10% institutional indirect costs/overheads. A full budget will be requested only from invited second-stage proposals.

Please see the Request for Applications for further information, noting that applications are submitted via the online grant management system, Grants@Heart. The first phase application includes a 5 page Research Proposal and 5 page biosketches for each PI and co-PI using the U.S. National Institutes of Health biosketch template.

Key Dates
First phase applications due to UQR&I: 2 July 2018
First phase applications close with the American Heart Association: 6 July 2018
Notification of second stage proposal invitations: 17 August 2018
Invited second phase proposals close with the American Heart Association: September 2018 (target)
Invited finalist interviews: October 2018 (target)
Announcement of awards: November 2018 (target)

For UQR&I internal review and feedback, email your application and completed Funding Application Coversheet to internationalgrants@research.uq.edu.au. Interested applicants are strongly encouraged to make contact with UQR&I as soon as possible to discuss their application.
Website: http://professional.heart.org/professional/ResearchPrograms/ApplicationInformation/ssLINK/UCM_500804

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