RFA for Patient-partnered Collaborations for Single-cell Analysis of Rare Inflammatory Pediatric Disease

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has issued a Patient-Partnered Collaborations for Single-Cell Analysis of Rare Inflammatory Pediatric Disease RFA, which aims to support the application of single-cell biology methods to rare inflammatory pediatric diseases that will clarify cellular mechanisms of disease, understand disease heterogeneity, and improve biomarker identification or diagnostics.

Through the RFA, CZI invites proposals to establish and develop collaborative networks that bring together patient organizations and researchers engaged in single-cell biology. The overarching goal is to support interdisciplinary teams as they characterize the cellular mechanisms underlying rare inflammatory diseases, including possible identification of biomarkers and elucidation of disease pathways that will clarify disease stratification or identify therapeutic opportunities. Patient organizations are expected to be active collaborators in this research opportunity and full partners in developing the grant application to directly inform research questions that will have the greatest impact on rare disease patients, and engage in study design, patient engagement, and research dissemination. Applications for this funding opportunity should be focused on the single-cell analysis of rare pediatric diseases with a specific interest in clarifying those with a distinct or primary inflammatory pathology.

Through the RFA, grants of $500,000 (inclusive of up to 15 percent indirect costs) per year for four years will be awarded. The award period for each RFA is an initial two years of funding, followed by an additional two years, pending evaluation.  

Specific project focus areas may include, but are not limited to: understanding the pathophysiology of rare inflammatory pediatric diseases at the cellular and molecular levels; application of single-cell methods to identify expression profiles, pathways, cell-types, or states involved in disease diagnosis, progression, or to clarify heterogeneity among individuals impacted by a single, or related, rare disease; developing new experimental and analytical tools to dissect rare inflammatory diseases at the single-cell level; identification of predictive and diagnostic biomarkers to understand disease progression and which biological and inflammatory features drive rare disease severity; improving patient stratification/classification through application of single-cell approaches; expanding disease modeling for rare disease translational research and connecting understudied genes to model systems, including clarifying how variants of unknown significance manifest in differing cellular pathology.

Collaboration is a central feature of this RFA and grant program. Applications will each have two lead principal investigators (PIs): one representing the research team and the other representing the patient organization. Teams should be made up of two investigators with a maximum of five investigators, including the patient organization leader.

Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign nonprofit organizations, public and private institutions, such as colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, state and local government, and eligible agencies of the federal government. For-profit organizations are not eligible to receive funding but may be involved in projects as a collaborator.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative website.