Now accepting applications for Duke/UNC CTSA Consortium pilot projects

Researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have a strong history of medical research collaborations, including joint projects to combat HIV, sickle cell disease, and muscular dystrophy.

UNC and Duke are both members of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program Consortium which was created to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The CTSA Programs at each institution, Duke Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Duke CTSI) and the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute, have teamed up again to offer the Duke/UNC CTSA Consortium pilot opportunity.

The purpose of this pilot funding opportunity is to stimulate new collaborations by motivating investigators to look beyond the walls of their own institution for ways to enhance their translational research efforts. Such inter-institutional collaborations can help accelerate the pace of research by granting more investigators expanded access to resources, expertise, and patient populations.

"A little healthy competition never hurt anyone, but tackling the major problems that affect our society today requires that we work together toward a common goal," said John Buse, MD, PhD, co-director of NC TraCS, UNC's CTSA. "UNC and Duke have a long history of collaboration, and these awards were designed to encourage more researchers to think about how teaming up to bring about improvements in the understanding and treatment of human disease."

Since the inception of this collaborative funding mechanism in 2014, this program has proven to be both popular and very competitive. Currently the funding success rate is ~14%.

Deadline for applications is February 23, 2021.

Please review the RFA for details and submission instructions.

Highlights from past Duke/UNC Collaborative Pilot Projects

UNC/Duke Team Publish on Using CRISPR Technique on Adult Mammals — A team of investigators supported in part by a $50,000 CTSA-supported Duke/UNC Collaborative Pilot Program has published results of their research into using CRISPR to treat an adult mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy using a virus to deliver the gene-editing system. This marks the first time that the CRISPR technique has successfully treated a genetic disease inside a fully developed living mammal with a strategy that has the potential to be translated to human therapy. The paper appeared on December 31, 2015 in Science.

New grant allows Vora to collaborate with Duke to identify novel genes critical to human brain development — Dr. Neeta Vora, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and Dr. Erica Davis at the Duke University Center for Human Disease Modeling have been awarded an exploratory/developmental research grant (R21) from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Their research was initially funded by a $50,000 Duke/UNC-Chapel Hill CTSA Consortium Collaborative Translational Research Pilot Grant to model novel candidate genes in zebrafish to shed light on genes critical to human development.