FARA - Grant Program

About FARA's Research Program

FARA supports research through funding competitive grants across the spectrum from basic research through drug development and clinical research programs in Friedreich's Ataxia (FA). We promote collaboration among scientists, advocate for public-private partnerships and host open forums for leading scientists to share their insights and ideas to advance therapeutic development for FA.

FARA's Grant types, Deadlines, and Budget Limits are described in the table below. You can view special interest requests for proposals (RFPs) and other grant program updates and announcements here.

All investigators interested in FA-related research are invited to submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) through our submission portal. All proposed research must fall within FARA's Grant Program Priorities. For more information on how to apply for a FARA grant, click here.

Grant types, Deadlines, and Budget Limits
Grant Type		Letter of Intent (LOI) Deadline	Application Deadline	Maximum Budget (in US dollars)
+	General Research Grant	February 1 & July 15	April 1 & September 15	$125,000 per year for 1 or 2 years
The General Research Grant is open to qualified investigators proposing projects that fall within FARA Research Priorities, as outlined here. Please click here for information on application requirements. To view lay abstracts of recent FARA-funded General Research Grants, click here.
+	Keith Michael Andrus Cardiac Award	January 15	March 1	$150,000 per year for 1 or 2 years
The Keith Michael Andrus Cardiac Research Award was made in honor of its namesake to remember Keith's legacy and to help advanced our understanding and treatment of the cardiomyopathy associated with FA. Proposals for this award should focus on advancing understanding and/or treatment of the cardiac involvement in FA. Please click here for information on application requirements.
+	Kyle Bryant Translational Research Award	May 15	July 15	$250,000 per year for 1 or 2 years
The Kyle Bryant Translational Research Award honors its namesake for his diligent efforts to aid in the acceleration of preclinical studies to early pilot trials in FA patients. This award is given to proposals focused on pre-clinical and clinical investigations that will advance treatments for FA. Please click here for information on application requirements. The specific aims must target one or more of the following: Identification of biomarkers for FA that will elucidate disease variability, severity, and prognosis; facilitate drug screening, and/or optimize selection of patients and clinical endpoints for clinical trials; Development of tools and technologies that can (a) be directly used for therapy development; (b) overcome existing obstacles to treatment and (c) be directly applied to, or adapted for, delivery of potential therapeutics; Pre-clinical development and testing of potential therapeutics, biologics, and devices in cells and animals; Clinical studies of patient outcome measures.
+	Bronya J. Keats International Research Collaboration Award	May 15	July 15	$200,000 per year for 1 or 2 years
The Bronya J. Keats International Research Collaboration Award honors its namesake for her academic career in understanding the GAA triplet repeat mutation in FA, and her continued role in managing FARA's grant program. Proposals should focus on FA research that relies on international collaboration among investigators in at least two different countries. Special consideration will be given to proposals that bring new scientists to the FA community. The rationale for the collaboration needs to be convincing and must clearly demonstrate that the research goals could not be achieved by just one of the participating groups and that the synergy among the groups is essential for the success of the project. Please click here for information on application requirements.
+	Postdoctoral Research Award	February 1 & July 15	April 1 & September 15	$100,000 per year for 1 or 2 years
FARA offers a Postdoctoral Research Award as a mechanism to expand and retain young investigators in the FA biomedical research space. For this application type, the Postdoctoral trainee is the PI of the grant proposal. Postdoctoral trainees should focus their research proposal on projects that fall within FARA Research Priorities, as outlined here. Applicants are required to submit a personal statement describing their current position and plans for the future as it relates to FA research, with a description of career goals and how the proposed research and research environment will favor achieving those goals. A mentoring plan developed jointly by the junior investigator and mentor(s), as well as letters of support from all mentors are also required. Competitive candidates demonstrate qualities that will enhance FARA's overall enterprise of understanding fundamentals of disease pathology and developing treatments and a cure for FA. Please click here for information on application requirements.
+	Postdoctoral Fellowship	February 1 & July 15	April 1 & September 15	Trainee salary up to 2 yrs
FARA offers a Postdoctoral Fellowship. For this application type, the PI of the grant proposal may be either the trainee or the trainee's faculty advisor; however, both the trainee and advisor must be named in the application. Applicants are required to submit a personal statement describing their current position and plans for the future as it relates to FA research, with a description of career goals and how the proposed research and research environment will favor achieving those goals. A mentoring plan developed jointly by the junior investigator and mentor(s), as well as letters of support from all mentors are also required. The only allowable budget item is the trainee salary/stipend (plus applicable fringe benefits), which must not exceed the appropriate NIH stipend level. Postdoctoral trainees should provide a minimum 75% effort contributed to the design, writing and implementation of the proposed work. Please click here for information on application requirements.
+	Request for Proposals and Ad-hoc Requests	FARA will issue requests for proposals (RFPs) on an ad-hoc basis.
See the new Award for Innovative Mindset (AIM) RFP here. All RFPs will be announced through this webpage and through our e-bulletin list. If you are not a subscriber please click here to sign-up. Lastly, FARA is willing to consider ad-hoc proposals off cycle that are high-value projects. For more information, please contact FARA at grants@curefa.org

Grant program updates and announcements

Request For Proposals: Pharmacodynamic Biomarker Development

FARA is issuing a request for proposal (RFP) to support clinical drug development programs in Friedreich’s ataxia (FRDA) by promoting the discovery of technologies to measure frataxin or surrogates of frataxin in inaccessible tissues. This RFP focuses on the development and validation of pharmacodynamic and/or efficacy biomarkers that can be used to support early-phase clinical trials that test promising pharmacological interventions, specifically aimed at frataxin gene and protein replacement, increasing frataxin levels and restoring/substituting for frataxin function.

This RFP supports the discovery of methodologies to measure in FRDA affected tissues (nervous system, heart, muscle):

Frataxin
Biochemical activities related to/downstream of frataxin function
Metabolic functions that are modified/negatively impacted by frataxin loss, and correlate with disease pathophysiology and progression

Please submit a Letter of Intent here. The LOI deadline is 7/01/2021.
You can access the full RFP here.

Award for Innovative Mindset (AIM)

FARA is pleased to renew the request for proposals for a one-year Award for Innovative Mindset (AIM).
AIM supports innovative, high-impact research that will foster new directions, bring new perspectives to the field and address neglected issues in Friedreich's ataxia (FA) research.

This RFP promotes the initial exploration of innovative, high-risk, high-gain, and potentially groundbreaking concepts in FA research. The proposed research project should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong scientific rationale and study design. The presentation of preliminary and/or published data is encouraged, but not required.

The Application Submission Deadline is June 1, 2021. Please submit your proposal here.
The award recipients will be announced by August 1, 2021.
You can access the full RFP here.

The FARA forum webinars

The FARA Forum is a monthly webinar featuring investigators who have been awarded FARA grants. The webinar is open to FARA grant awardees and it is held on the second Tuesday of every month. For more information contact liz.soragni@curefa.org

May 11, 2021
  5:00 PM ET Aseem Ansari, St. Jude Children's Hospital
  5:45 PM ET Mirella Dottori, University of Wollongong, Australia

June 8, 2021
  12:00 PM ET Tslil Ast, Mootha lab, Broad Institute
  12:45 PM ET Joshua Meisel, Mootha lab, Broad Institute

July 13, 2021
  12:00 PM ET Javier Santos, Universidad de Buenos Aires
  12:45 PM ET Jaclyn Tamaroff, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

COVID-19 emergency:
If you have been awarded a FARA grant, we will continue to request progress reports as they are due. If your work has been impacted by the COVID-19 emergency – for example if milestones could not be met or no work at all could be performed – we ask you to provide an explanation of how the COVID-19 emergency has impacted your research. We are also requesting that you inform FARA of what actions and measures are needed to assist you in restoring and reestablishing your research. We realize that there may be requests for re-budgeting and no-cost extensions and these decisions will be made on a case by case basis, FARA is implementing a maximum flexibility approach, to meet the needs of our research community and help its recovery.

Please contact us at grants@curefa.org or liz.soragni@curefa.org, at any time if you have questions or concerns.

Grant program updates and announcements

Newly awarded grants

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