Systems Biology of Infection and Inflammation in Chronic Diseases (U19 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued solicitation RFA-AI-28-014 to establish centers focused on the systems-level understanding of the links between infectious pathogens, inflammatory pathways, and chronic diseases. The program supports two types of centers: Chronic and Infectious Diseases Systems Biology Centers (CIDSB), which examine the bidirectional link between chronic and infectious diseases, and Systems Biology Inflammation Centers (SBI), which focus on the role of inflammation in chronic diseases to identify precision medicine targets. The primary goals are to develop predictive computational models for disease progression, discover novel drug targets and biomarkers, and create harmonized, FAIR-compliant cross-disease datasets. The total program funding is 26 million dollars, with an expected 10 awards and an individual award ceiling of 2.5 million dollars. Applications must be submitted electronically via Grants.gov by February 18, 2027. The proposal structure is multi-component, requiring an overall section, an administrative core, a data and modeling core, and a biospecimen collection and processing core, with additional requirements for research projects and optional cores depending on the center type. Evaluation is based on an overall impact score focusing on significance and the qualifications of the investigators. Awardees must comply with strict cybersecurity incident reporting requirements, notifying the HHS awarding agency within 48 hours of discovery, and must adhere to rigorous biosafety and human subjects protection standards. Applicants must maintain active SAM registration and UEI identifiers to be eligible for funding.