University at Albany's Division for Research and Economic Development is offering a winter NSF I-Corps short course starting in January. 

Are you conducting translational research, or do you have an exciting invention or innovation? Researchers, students, and entrepreneurs have the opportunity to receive grant funding to progress their research or innovation. The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges. The NSF I-Corps program @ UAlbany can help you (1) explore your market and (2) strengthen the commercialization plan of your next grant proposal. 
 
UAlbany offers a short 3.5-week program formatted for the busy researcher. Successful participation may make you eligible for a $50,000 NSF Teams grant (https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/teams.jsp).
 
Would you like to see if this program is right for you? Join a 30 minute remote information session scheduled for November 15^th at noon.
 
Ready to apply for UAlbany’s next cohort which will begin on January 3^rd and end on January 26^th? Let’s get started. You are encouraged to apply by December 20th. Click here to apply

While thousands of rare diseases exist, many share underlying causes. Moreover, many disease etiologies underlie multiple more common diseases. Small businesses are developing drugs targeting shared molecular etiologies. However, the standard approach in clinical trials is to focus on one disease at a time, with the choice of diseases often based on prevalence. This approach inevitably results in clinical trials in only the most common rare diseases, with the exclusion of patients with the least common diseases, even though the scientific rationale for the use of the drug may be as strong, if not stronger, in the lower prevalence rare diseases.

NCATS seeks to enable efficient and effective clinical trials that will impact shared molecular etiologies for more than one rare disease, and, in the process, identify and overcome challenges in adapting the oncology basket trial model to rare diseases.

This NOFO provides support using the SBIR cooperative agreement mechanisms for the development of basket clinical trials for rare diseases. NCATS seeks applications that propose research and development of tools and turnkey technologies for higher throughput automated measures with on-line sensing, rapid acquisition and analysis of data to reduce manual handling. Funded projects will result in an increased availability of miniaturized automated tissue chip platforms for use in drug development and across multiple applications as a major research tool in biomedical research laboratories.

Basket Clinical Trials of Drugs Targeting Shared Molecular Etiologies in Multiple Rare Diseases

• SBIR: RFA-TR-24-001 (U44 Cooperative Agreement, Clinical Trial Required)
• Due dates: Jan. 4, 2024, and Mar. 15, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. ET, local time

NCATS strives to develop innovations to reduce, remove or bypass costly and time-consuming bottlenecks in the translational research pipeline to speed the delivery of new drugs, diagnostics and medical devices to patients. Projects of most interest to NCATS include those that focus on drug discovery and development, biomedical, clinical and health research informatics and clinical, dissemination and implementation research.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the scientific program contacts listed in the NOFO prior to submitting an application. Refer to the NCATS Research Priorities page for more information on areas of interest. Please note that the NCATS SBIR program does not support applications that include clinical trials.