Pilot projects in Maternal Neonatal Child Health
The following RFP is considered an internal Stanford funding opportunity. Therefore, you do not need to submit your proposals through your RPM/RMG or CGO/OSR for institutional approval.
The Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection (ITI) Center for Human Systems Immunology (CHSI) (with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation)
Pilot Projects for Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH) Program:
Molecular Nutrition – Understanding and Optimizing Fetal-Infant Growth & Placental Function
Amount of funding: Successful applicants will receive $50 - $100K (total direct) for one year with a possible second year of funding contingent upon scientific progress.
Eligibility: Stanford faculty with PI eligibility and CE faculty, Instructors, Clinical Instructors, Academic staff-research (for example: senior research associates), and postdoctoral fellows. If the proposal is submitted by a non-faculty PI, it is required that a PI-eligible faculty mentor is named. This is an internal Stanford funding opportunity so a PI waiver is not needed.
Purpose: Our overall aim is to advance understanding of the molecular basis for optimal fetal – infant growth and placental function. Application of new tools, analytics and imaging technologies could provide novel insights to unsolved problems in MNCH. Also here we wish to encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration and will give special consideration to proposals with partnerships between technologists and clinical collaborators.
- Placental Biology/Disease — maternal blood-based signatures for inadequate nutrient/waste exchange with fetus (similar to above but for maternal-fetal status during pregnancy); improved cellular and/or molecular understanding of pre-eclampsia and intrauterine growth retardation
- Nutrition — biochemical signatures for an “optimal” growth state during pregnancy or infancy, or for facile detection of specific nutrient/micronutrient inadequacies
- Breastmilk – analytical innovations in breastmilk analysis to enable detailed cellular, sub-cellular, and/or molecular studies from low volumes (<1ml), especially as related to infant growth and/or neurodevelopment.
For example, in the above case of breastmilk, the normal range of human milk oligosaccharides, proteins, fats, amino acids, peptides, or vitamins in human milk is not well-defined. Furthermore, we do not know whether these components vary by maternal or infant health. Whereas we are also interested in examining exosomes, miRNAs, mRNAs, and the cellular components of milk, the large milk volumes needed with existing methods prohibit such an exploration. Methods to estimate the levels of these components as well as unknown molecules in milk using volumes that can be unobtrusively collected from women (ideally <1ml) are of interest.
We seek applications that utilize a systems-oriented approach to identify and define biological profiles of adequate versus inadequate nutrition and growth among pregnant women, their fetus and newborn. Studies may include measurements of micro- and macronutrients, systemic and cellular signals of optimal growth and/ or nutrition as well as the microbiota as pertinent to proposal aims. In addition, we would like to solicit projects that will improve the throughput of relevant biochemical sample analyses, including optimization for small sample volumes and for feasibility of implementation in samples collected from low-resource settings. Both preclinical and clinical researchers are welcome to apply.
ZOOM CONFERENCE: We offer the opportunity to discuss questions regarding this MNCH RFP directly with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation during a ZOOM conference call with Farhad Imam, MD, PhD, Senior Program Officer, on Wed., June 19 (11:30-noon PST), Mon., June 24(3:30-4:00 PM PST) and Fri June 28 (9:00-9:30 AM PST). Please RSVP in this DOODLE poll.
Timeline: Internal Letter of Intent deadline: July 5, 2019
Presentation of project outline (by invitation only): August 26-27, 2019
Please see the Letter of intent guidelines below
LETTER OF INTENT GUIDELINES
By Friday, July 5, 2019, please upload one PDF file containing the following on our submission website.
- Institutional representative: not applicable. You do not need to submit your proposal to your RPM/RMG or your CGO/OSR for their approval.
- File name: Last name_ITI_MNCH_2019.pdf
- One-page proposal (Letter of intent):
- Institute of Immunity, Transplantation and Infection, Center for Human Systems Immunology Pilot Projects
- Project Title
- Project category – please select:
- Placental biology/disease, Nutrition, Breastmilk
- PI and Co-PI name, title/rank, department, address, phone number, email address
- Briefly describe the proposal and the participants not to exceed one page. Preliminary results not required.
- Format: Arial font size 11, single spaced, 1/2-inch margin
- No budget proposal necessary with letter of intent.
Selection Process
The investigators of the most promising proposals will be notified in early August 2019 to present their project on Aug 26-27 to members of the advisory board, steering committee and BMGF representatives during the annual meeting of the Center for Human Systems Immunology at Stanford. Final projects will be chosen shortly after this meeting and investigators asked to submit a more detailed proposal of 3-4 pages, not including references, along with NIH Biosketch (for all faculty, senior postdoctoral and clinical fellows, and key personnel) and a NIH format budget and budget justification for 2 years. Funding will be released in October 2019.
For inquiries, please contact Gerlinde Obermoser, Project Director, Center for Human Systems Immunology: gerlinde.obermoser@stanford.edu or
Bach-Hong Tran, ITI Pre-Award Research Grant Manager bhtran@stanford.edu
Stanford faculty with PI eligibility and CE faculty, Instructors, Clinical Instructors, Academic staff-research (for example: senior research associates), and postdoctoral fellows. If the proposal is submitted by a non-faculty PI, it is required that a PI-eligible faculty mentor is named. This is an internal Stanford funding opportunity so a PI waiver is not needed.
We seek applications that utilize a systems-oriented approach to identify and define biological profiles of adequate versus inadequate nutrition and growth among pregnant women, their fetus and newborn. Studies may include measurements of micro- and macronutrients, systemic and cellular signals of optimal growth and/ or nutrition as well as the microbiota as pertinent to proposal aims.