Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type-2 Diabetes (HPAP-T2D) (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA DK 18 016

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA DK 18 016

The Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type-2 Diabetes (HPAP-T2D) funding opportunity (RFA-DK-18-016) is an NIH cooperative agreement (U01) designed to broaden the existing Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP) so it can systematically study human pancreata from deceased tissue donors with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and related metabolic disorders. The central idea is to build a well-organized, deeply characterized set of real human pancreatic tissues and linked datasets that researchers can use to better understand islet dysfunction in T2D, while leveraging and expanding the infrastructure HPAP already created for studying diabetes biology.

The FOA is structured to support a single, highly capable team with end-to-end expertise. That team is expected to handle the full pipeline: identifying appropriate donors, coordinating and carrying out tissue recovery, performing standardized processing of primary human pancreatic tissue, conducting intensive multimodal characterization (for example, complementary molecular, cellular, histologic, and physiologic analyses), and then building, curating, and maintaining the resulting integrated dataset in a way that is useful to the wider research community. Because this is a cooperative agreement, the NIH is not just providing funds; the project is expected to involve substantial NIH programmatic involvement and coordination typical of U01 awards, with an emphasis on producing a shared research resource rather than a closed, single-lab dataset.

The work supported by this program has two main required objectives. First, the awardee must identify, collect, and comprehensively characterize pancreatic tissues from donors with T2D and related forms of islet dysfunction, along with age-matched control donors. Second, the awardee must analyze, organize, and publicly share the resulting data by using and expanding PANC DB, an existing open-access resource database associated with HPAP. In practice, this means the award is as much about building a high-quality community resource (tissues, metadata, and well-curated datasets) as it is about generating new biological findings, with a strong expectation that the outputs will be usable and discoverable by external investigators.

HPAP-T2D sits within the broader Human Islet Research Network (HIRN), which NIH created in 2014 to accelerate collaborative translational research on diabetes. While HIRN originally focused heavily on understanding how functional human beta cell mass is lost in Type 1 Diabetes and on strategies to protect or replace beta cells, this FOA extends the HPAP platform to address T2D and metabolic disease contexts. The practical implication is that the program is meant to capitalize on existing networks, standards, and data-sharing norms already established by HPAP/HIRN, rather than starting from scratch.

Administratively, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding and falls under the Health and Food and Nutrition activity areas, with CFDA 93.847. The agency is the National Institutes of Health. The FOA indicates an award ceiling of $2,000,000 and an original application closing date of 2019-02-26 (noting this is historical timing as provided in the source data). The title explicitly states "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," signaling that the supported activities should focus on biospecimen collection, analysis, and data-resource development rather than interventional clinical studies.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations and includes many government and nonprofit categories as well as academic and private-sector institutions. Eligible applicants listed include state, county, and local governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; tribal organizations that are not federally recognized; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status (other than institutions of higher education); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); small businesses; and other entities. The FOA also calls out several institution types as other eligible applicants, including Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, AANAPISIs, Hispanic-serving institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. Foreign institutions (non-U.S. entities) are not eligible to apply, and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible; however, "foreign components" as defined in the NIH Grants Policy Statement are allowed, meaning certain project elements may be carried out internationally under NIH rules even though the primary applicant organization must be eligible and U.S.-based.

In short, HPAP-T2D is a resource-building, data-sharing focused NIH cooperative agreement meant to bring rigor, scale, and open-access organization to the study of human pancreatic tissue in Type 2 Diabetes. The funded team is expected to deliver high-quality tissue procurement and standardized multimodal characterization, and then make the resulting datasets broadly usable through expansion of the PANC DB open-access platform, strengthening the research community's ability to study human islet dysfunction and pancreatic pathophysiology in T2D.

• The National Institutes of Health in the food and nutrition, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Human Pancreas Analysis Program for Type-2 Diabetes (HPAP-T2D) (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.847.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2018-10-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2019-02-26. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $2,000,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

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