NIH Funding Opportunity Announcements

Well that explains why the NIH isn't producing anything useful.

So what's even the point of the latest announcement then if they just hand out the reviews to people who don't mind saying absurd things just because they don't want resources going to ME research? Why do they even bother pretending when they don't even have to give a damn even when there's extra scrutiny? I don't get it. Just come out and say it who even cares? None of this will count as having tried. This is basically more obstruction.

Imagine someone rejecting an Alzheimer's proposal by saying "what's the point, we can't even treat it?". They would never be asked to review anything ever again and probably never work in science again. It's unimaginable that anyone would say something this absurd and yet here it's perfectly fine.

So the NIH has no intention or will to do anything. Despite being told explicitly to do so. Thanks for nothing, jackasses.

Although I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed in OMF too. We need to know these things. If they want to steer clear of being political that's fine but we need to know these things so we can counter them.
 
On the counter argument I think it was always going to be tough getting approval in the last round. Leonnard Jason has had a long standing mono award that expired and he was awarded a new 5 year R01 grant to continue the work
MAINTENANCE AND INCIDENCE OF ME/CFS FOLLOWING MONO

Once that application was deemed to be the leading candidate I'm guessing that perhaps they had to find reasons to low score some of the others to make it a clear winner. If they did not approve the award then that long term follow-up opportunity would be lost for good. This is all speculation and wondering on my part. Not sure how things work in reality.

FYI the other new grant application approved in the last round was an R21 grant
APPLICATION OF LIPIDOMICS TO IDENTIFY BIOMARKERS OF IMMUNE AND MITOCHONDRIAL DISTURBANCES IN CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME.
 
A bit confused here. Maybe someone can help and it's a case of the bad brainfog.

According this Cort blog, only 9 grants were submitted to the NIH SEP in 2019 (entire year). But unless there was another meeting later this year, that is not on the website, the last NIH SEP was in 3/19 (also FY19).

This tweet says
All five of Dr. Ron Davis’s team’s #MEcfs grant applications were rejected in the latest round, w/ one [NIH] reviewer rejecting 1 for a diagnostic test: “because there’s no cure for ME/CFS – why would we want to diagnose it better?”
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So did Stanford's submissions account 5/9 grant submissions?

Also occupyme blog wrote this
Of the twelve extramural grants in 2019, seven continued from last year: Davis, Friedberg, Light, Unutmaz, Williams, Nacul, and Rayhan. There were five new grants: Abdullah, Daugherty, Li, Natelson, and Younger, but only Younger’s was a five year grant.
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I had earlier presumed this meant 9 grants were reviewed in 2019, and 5 approved, but this information doesn't seem to mesh together.
 
All, unfortunately, were rejected in the latest round, with one reviewer rejecting a grant for a diagnostic test, reasoning that because there’s no cure for ME/CFS – why would we want to diagnose it better?
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What is bound to be an unpopular opinion - if an application for funding for a diagnostic test can be derailed by this simplistic argument then it wasn't a well written application. This strongly suggests to me that the application put forward no strong argument for the benefit of developing the test, that the person who wrote the application thought that the benefits were so obvious that they didn't need to explain them and, unfortunately for them and us, was caught out by a question that they should have anticipated and preempted.
 
Andy said:
What is bound to be an unpopular opinion - if an application for funding for a diagnostic test can be derailed by this simplistic argument then it wasn't a well written application. This strongly suggests to me that the application put forward no strong argument for the benefit of developing the test, that the person who wrote the application thought that the benefits were so obvious that they didn't need to explain them and, unfortunately for them and us, was caught out by a question that they should have anticipated and preempted.
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It probably shows the need to be extra careful with grant applications around ME. It maybe that someone didn't understand the need for a diagnostic test when there is no treatment. But it could be that a reviewer doesn't believe in ME as a disease and is looking for ways to pick holes. Either way care is needed.

If this is about the nano needle I wonder if there is an issue because it doesn't seem to help to explain any mechanism and hence it could appear as a blackbox test rather than an exploration of the biology - which I could see could devalue it. But things like the plasma switching do seem to tell us something interesting and so perhaps rather than the diagnostic test in its own right it would be good to talk about how it moves on the science.
 
Adrian said:
It probably shows the need to be extra careful with grant applications around ME. It maybe that someone didn't understand the need for a diagnostic test when there is no treatment. But it could be that a reviewer doesn't believe in ME as a disease and is looking for ways to pick holes. Either way care is needed.
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True, but there will have been multiple reviewers, so it would seem that this, and the other applications aren't scoring a high enough average. Either all, or the majority, of the reviewers are looking to be hypercritical for the sake of it and/or the Stanford applications aren't written in a way that make them acceptable to the NIH.
 
I'm sorry some of the promising sounding Stanford applications didn't get funding. I have no idea how the decisions are made, but I think it's probably unwise to try to guess the reasons they were refused. We can't know the full story unless NIH decides to publish it, which I guess is not their normal procedure.
 
Andy said:
What is bound to be an unpopular opinion - if an application for funding for a diagnostic test can be derailed by this simplistic argument then it wasn't a well written application. This strongly suggests to me that the application put forward no strong argument for the benefit of developing the test, that the person who wrote the application thought that the benefits were so obvious that they didn't need to explain them and, unfortunately for them and us, was caught out by a question that they should have anticipated and preempted.
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Andy said:
True, but there will have been multiple reviewers, so it would seem that this, and the other applications aren't scoring a high enough average. Either all, or the majority, of the reviewers are looking to be hypercritical for the sake of it and/or the Stanford applications aren't written in a way that make them acceptable to the NIH.
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Not an unpopular opinion -- it's a fair criticism and a possible explanation. However, Ron Davis has received big grants throughout his career so he should be well aware of the gotchas of writing grant applications. I wouldn't expect him and his colleagues to forget to outline the benefits of their proposed research project.

I would rather think that the reviewers are dubious about RBC deformability in ME and the nanoneedle, for which SGTC submitted R01 applications last year, because they're still very preliminary assays. No comparison to other diseases, no idea of what might be causing the observed changes besides "a factor in the blood", new unconventional technologies, etc. Maybe they would agree to funding R21 (exploratory) grants for now, but until there is better pilot data about these assays they might continue to be very critical.

rvallee said:
Although I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed in OMF too. We need to know these things. If they want to steer clear of being political that's fine but we need to know these things so we can counter them.
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There is a serious chance that this would cause a backlash from the NIH, in the form of just dropping any new or revised application coming from OMF. It took Ron Davis three tries to obtain his R01 grant -- if OMF had been critical of NIH from the first try, where they even refused to assess the grant, his reapplications would have been instantly nuked.
 
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cassava7 said:
Not an unpopular opinion -- it's a fair criticism and a possible explanation. However, Ron Davis has received big grants throughout his career so he should be well aware of the gotchas of writing grant applications. I wouldn't expect him and his colleagues to forget to outline the benefits of their proposed research project.

I would rather think that the reviewers are dubious about RBC deformability in ME and the nanoneedle, for which SGTC submitted R01 applications last year, because they're still very preliminary assays. No comparison to other diseases, no idea of what might be causing the observed changes besides "a factor in the blood", new unconventional technologies, etc. Maybe they would agree to funding R21 (exploratory) grants for now, but until there is better pilot data about these assays they might continue to be very critical.
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So if this is true, we are back to the applications not written in a way that would be acceptable to the NIH. I agree, Ron and his team have obviously been successful in being awarded funding in the past, so why are they being repeatedly unsuccessful with applications for ME funding?

If their applications are, in effect, being turned down for the lack of a published evidence base to support the application, then I think that they need to focus on publishing the results that they have had and, presumably, will continue to have in the future - not only will this aid their applications but will assist in building the evidence base for any other researcher out there. Hopefully I'm suggesting something that they are already attempting but I'm not aware of any messaging from them to indicate that.
 
Andy said:
So if this is true, we are back to the applications not written in a way that would be acceptable to the NIH. I agree, Ron and his team have obviously been successful in being awarded funding in the past, so why are they being repeatedly unsuccessful with applications for ME funding?

If their applications are, in effect, being turned down for the lack of a published evidence base to support the application, then I think that they need to focus on publishing the results that they have had and, presumably, will continue to have in the future - not only will this aid their applications but will assist in building the evidence base for any other researcher out there. Hopefully I'm suggesting something that they are already attempting but I'm not aware of any messaging from them to indicate that.
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Agreed. Publishing papers sounds like a waste of time to many of us because it takes time and slows down progress in the lab (in normal times), but if it's the key to obtaining grants... it's a necessary "evil". Even then, though, NIH grant reviewers have to assess the quality of the published evidence and they may not be satisfied. Either because the evidence isn't strong enough or because they're being overly critical. In that case, publishing results won't have helped much with the whole grant application process.

On the positive side, if OMF researchers must publish, we get to know more about their progress. According to them, they are writing papers during the pandemic:
 
From an email.
News from NIH: Additional information about recently announced Program Announcements for ME/CFS research
NIH recently released two PARs for ME/CFS research: PAR-20-165 and PAR-20-168. Although these funding announcements do not support clinical trials, there are other ways investigators can submit those research applications to NIH. All Institutes utilize the “Parent Announcements” that are the NIH-wide grant mechanisms used to support clinical trials. These grant mechanisms can be found at: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/parent_announcements.htm. NIH program staff are available to talk to investigators about their plans for a clinical trial on ME/CFS.

Most, but not all, clinical trials submitted to NIH will have a budget exceeding $500,000 in one or more years of the application. Applicants for such trials are required to contact their program official and obtain agreement from the funding agency 6 weeks prior to their submission. Each NIH Institute has a two-stage review process, both by peer review in a study section, followed by review by the appropriate advisory council. Final funding decisions are made by the Institute Director.

For more information, go to the website for the specific NIH Institute that is best aligned with your study. See: https://www.nih.gov/institutes-nih

If you have questions and/or don’t know where to find information, contact Vicky Whittemore at: vicky.whittemore@nih.gov
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Andy said:
What is bound to be an unpopular opinion - if an application for funding for a diagnostic test can be derailed by this simplistic argument then it wasn't a well written application. This strongly suggests to me that the application put forward no strong argument for the benefit of developing the test, that the person who wrote the application thought that the benefits were so obvious that they didn't need to explain them and, unfortunately for them and us, was caught out by a question that they should have anticipated and preempted.
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I guess that those applying for grants look at what the funding body funds/will not fund and then try to make their proposal fit. If the NIH rejected an application to investigate/develop the nano-needle then one thought is - couldn't the measurement be an artefact due to the fact that the cells are not in a natural media (salt has been added - anything else?). Just suggesting a possible reason to refuse. If a technique (nano-needle) keeps giving the "right answer" then that seems to me to be a reason to fund it.
 
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