Apply for REF Grants
A request for proposals for the second round of WOR grants is available online at www.withinourreach.info. The deadline for grant applications is December 1, and winners will be announced and grants awarded in summer 2008. More details about each grant category are available on the WOR Web site.
Other REF funding is available in a variety of forms and dollar amounts for medical students, graduate students, fellows and residents, young rheumatologists, experienced physicians, physicians in transition, and health professionals. For example, the Physician Scientist Development Award is a mentored post-doctoral fellowship program designed to enable physicians lacking research experience to become investigators. Other grants support career transitions into geriatric and gerontological aspects of rheumatology, and the Clinical Investigator Fellowship Award is designed to train fellows or young rheumatologists in clinical investigation in a “structured, formal training program.” Total funding for grants is about $4.1 million per year, and is expected to grow by 10% annually through 2010.
An overview of all REF grants and awards is available at www.refawards.org, and application information will be available in the spring. – DH
New Grants for 2008
Two more grant categories, which are about to become available for the first time, will provide $1.2 to $1.5 million each over three years. These two categories are defined in “an intentionally vague way,” says Dr. O’Dell, “because we want them to be innovative, [and for grantees] to use their imaginations to come up with [proposals] that we never would have thought of.” Dr. O’Dell expects that many award-winning proposals would be able to satisfy both categories. At present, the precise details of each have yet to be worked out. The categories are:
- Novel clinical trials: This grant will address unmet needs in the development of new treatments. This could include novel ways of applying existing treatments, says Dr. O’Dell. For example, people suspected – for whatever reason – of having a unique ability to respond to certain drugs could be tested for their response to those drugs.
- Collaborative projects: This grant mechanism will lead to large-scale, multi-disciplinary approaches. A clinical trial of a drug could be piggybacked with studies of biomarkers such as gene expression patterns, cytokine levels, autoantibody levels, and blood levels of classical complement pathway. Genetics and physiology could be correlated with response to different therapies, says Dr. O’Dell.
Find the Funds
The ACR is taking an innovative approach to funding WOR. They have developed a cadre of “ambassadors,” physician volunteers such as Emily M. Isaacs, MD, to solicit patients or family members to make donations.