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Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders Pilot and Feasibility Grants: May 1
February 26, 2008, Volume 54, No. 23

The Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders is accepting applications for its Pilot and Feasibility Grant Program. Submissions should be related to musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair, which is the broad focus of the Center, and Grants are only eligible for Center members (see below). Pilot grants will be due on May 1, 2008 with an expected start date of July 1, 2008 and we are expecting to award up to 4 new grants in this round. Potential applicants are encouraged to send a short e-mail, with their name, a rough title of the proposed project, a sentence or two (at most) describing the global hypothesis or objective, and a note as to which of the 3 Research Cores (Microarrays, Structure-Function Biomechanics, Small Animal Imaging) that would be used. I would appreciate receiving this e-mail asap, so I can advise and guide you on the appropriateness of your application idea within the framework of the overall Center. For more information on our Cores and the Center in general, see the web site at www.med.upenn.edu/pcmd

Eligibility

Only Center members are eligible. If you are not currently a member, please e-mail our office at (centermd@mail.med.upenn.edu) and we can send you information on becoming a member.

Categories of applicants include: 1) Established investigators with a proposal to test the feasibility of a new or innovative idea in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair representing a clear and distinct departure from their ongoing research, 2) Established investigators with no previous work in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair interested in testing the applicability of their expertise on a problem in this area, and 3) New investigators without significant extramural grant support as a Principal Investigator to develop a new project.

•      Pilot and Feasibility Grants should use at least one of the Center’s Research Cores.

•      Pilot project awardees are eligible for up to two years of funding (budgets will be for $25-35,000 per year and timelines should be for one or two years).

•      It is expected that these Pilot grants will lead to funding through other independent, extramural mechanisms. Therefore, the likelihood of future extramural funding will enter into the evaluation of these proposals.

Format

• Applications should be formatted loosely in the style of an NIH R03 grant (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-06-383.html). The main body of the application (Specific Aims through Research Design and Methods) should be less than 10 pages. The format should be:

1) Cover Page (not NIH face page) with grant title, PI name, affiliation, contact information 

2) Budget and brief budget justification (note that equipment is not allowed)

3) NIH Biosketch of PI

4) Specific Aims

5) Background and Significance

6) Preliminary Studies

7) Research Design and Methods

8) Brief Statement of Category of Investigator per guidelines above

9) Brief Statement of How this Funding will lead to other Extramural Funding

10) Human Subjects and/or Vertebrate Animals Subjects (if applicable)

11) Consultants (if applicable)

12) Literature Cited

13) Certification of Patient Oriented Research (if applicable) 

The completed application should be submitted as a single PDF file to centermd@mail.med.upenn.edu by May 1, 2008. Do not hesitate to contact me with any questions or comments.

—Louis J. Soslowsky, Professor of
Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering, Vice Chair for Research, Dept. of Orthopaedic Surgery, Director of Penn Center for
Musculoskeletal Disorders, Director of McKay Orthopaedic Research Laboratory

 

Almanac - February 26, 2008, Volume 54, No. 23