UCB Biopharma and Stanford Medicine Digital Health Collaborative Research: Neurology Call for Proposals
Please visit our website at https://med.stanford.edu/ucbcollaborative.html
The Call
The focus of this call is on the following disease areas: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Alzheimer’s Disease, Epilepsy, Myasthenia Gravis, neuromuscular disorders, Parkinson’s Disease and their clinical and biological associations. Experience in neurology research is not a prerequisite. This call for proposals seeks to encourage individuals from fields within and beyond the Neurology and Neuroscience departments to apply their innovative ideas and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of ALS, Alzheimer’s Disease, Epilepsy, Myasthenia Gravis, neuromuscular disorders, and Parkinson’s Disease. However, applicants outside of these departments must describe how they intend to acquire the necessary expertise in working with these disease areas. Potential avenues include training in a neurology laboratory or collaboration with an established neurology researcher.
Applying teams will ideally have domain biology/medical expertise as well as computational (informatics, statistics, epidemiological, data science and/or AI) expertise. One to three teams may be selected for funding whose proposals focus on at least one of the following:
- Digital phenotyping to define and predict diagnosis, disease state, or treatment response from e.g., EHR (or other clinical sources)
- Deep patient understanding to identify subsets of disease that may share biological and/or clinical features relevant to expected disease course or treatment
- Computational methods for discovering or defining the underlying pathogenic mechanisms that may suggest treatment approaches
- Computational and data linkage methods for elucidating the patient experience of the disease or the societal burden of the disease (economic or otherwise), including Patient Generated Health Data (PGHD)
Proposals will be considered even if they have partly missing expertise or data. The UCB-Stanford joint steering committee will work to identify people and resources that may provide missing expertise or data. Proposals containing substantial experimental programs or clinical trials will not be considered responsive to this call.
Background
UCB Pharmaceuticals and Stanford University have established a multi-year collaborative partnership which will involve multiple joint research projects, workshops, and exchange programs. The program is focused on digital health for predicting, preventing, and curing disease. Our goal is to identify the best opportunities for longer term collaborations.
Award
Funding for an approximate 1-year collaborative research project will be up to $200,000 (direct costs) plus additional customary indirect costs. The exact award amount and project duration may increase depending on project scope and feasibility. After a successful 1-year project, the UCB-Stanford Joint Steering Committee may invite a proposal for a full project with funding at the level of $250K-$400K/year.
Timeline
This call will have two phases. In the first phase, an online written pre-proposal is submitted. In the second phase, a subset of these will be invited to an interactive “Pitch Day” for which selected teams will work with UCB scientists to create a joint research proposal to present to the steering committee (made of representatives from Stanford and UCB). The steering committee will ask for a templated brief PowerPoint presentation followed by Q&A. After the Pitch Day, funded projects will be selected and notified.
You do not need to submit your pre-proposals through RMG or OSR for their approval; you may submit them directly to the program per the instructions below. Applicants selected to present on Pitch Day will need to submit their proposals, including a budget to RMG or OSR for review and approval prior to Pitch Day. See deadlines below:
- Call Open: November 1, 2021
- Pre-proposal Deadline: November 30, 2021
- Optional UCB-Stanford Collaboration & Neurology Info Session: November 15, 2021 from 9 - 10 am PT.
- Announcement of pre-proposals invited to Zoom “Pitch Day”: December 7, 2021
- School of Medicine PIF submission deadline: December 13, 2021 | Institutional official (RMG/OSR) deadline: January 6, 2022
- Joint “Pitch Day” pre-reads submission deadline: January 6, 2022
- Zoom “Pitch Day” presentation by finalists: January 13, 2022. The “Pitch Day” presentation will be a strictly templated brief PowerPoint presentation followed by questions from the Selection Committee.
- Award Notification: Mid-January, 2022
Optional UCB-Stanford Collaboration & Neurology Info Session
On November 15, 2021 at 9 - 10 am PT we will host a webinar to explain the UCB-Stanford program and this specific call for proposals. Attendance is not mandatory but encouraged. The webinar will be recorded and available after the initial presentation at https://med.stanford.edu/ucbcollaborative/call-for-proposals/neurology-rfp.html.
- Any Stanford member with PI privileges (faculty with PI eligibility) may serve as PI. CE Faculty with an approved CE PI waiver may also serve as PI. Approved CE Waivers are required by the pre-proposal deadline.
Pre-proposal Submission Instructions
Please submit your pre-proposal in SlideRoom at https://stanfordcatalyst.slideroom.com/#/permalink/program/62519/46msB6YDut
Prepare the following information for entry into the SlideRoom form. Word limits when provided are strict.
Basic Investigator Information
- Contact PI (Name, Rank, Department, email, phone)
- RPM and finance manager contact information (name and email address)
- Other investigators (Name, Rank, Department, email, phone and role on project).
- For each named investigator, provide NIH Biosketch. All biosketches should be in a single PDF.
- A 200 (or less) word summary indicating if investigators have worked together in the past (not required), on what general project, and with what general outcomes.
Proposal
- Provisional title of proposal (60 characters)
- Summary of proposed grant: 50 Words
- Background and any relevant preliminary work: 150 Words
- Innovation proposed (new knowledge, new method): 150 Words
- Highlights of proposed research approach: 200 Words
- 3-5 key milestones that will help define success of grant: 150 Words
- Data sources (both internal to Stanford and or through a third-party) your team has access to and would use for this proposed research project: 50 Words
- Additional expertise/data/resources that would help project succeed (if any): 50 Words
Pitch Day
Applicants selected to move forward will present their final proposal on Pitch Day, January 13th, 2022 with their UCB counterparts. This final proposal will include both a written document and a templated slide deck. In addition, School of Medicine investigators must submit a PIF by December 13, 2021. More detailed instructions will be sent to selected teams by December 7, 2021.
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PIF instructions: https://med.stanford.edu/rmg/grants/proposal-preparation---submission/proposal-intake-form--pif-.html
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PIF Submission: https://sera.stanford.edu/
Confidentiality
You should not include any confidential information in your Pre-Proposal. If you are invited to submit a Full-Proposal and believe you must include confidential information, please contact ucb-stanford@lists.stanford.edu so that a Confidential Disclosure Agreement is put in place to protect any confidential information.
Intellectual property
UCB will be granted a non-exclusive license to use Stanford IP for discovery and development of Therapeutics (as long as such are not covered by Stanford Patents). UCB has an option to negotiate an exclusive (commercial) rights to Stanford and Joint Inventions. Stanford software code and other copyrightable content will generally be offered under open-source license.
(A detailed intellectual property description will be provided before funding commences.)
Questions?
Contact ucb-stanford@lists.stanford.edu
The funds can be used for FTE, supplies, equipment, data, services, etc.