As life science research is becoming more complicated, requiring collaborative activity and significant resources, funding agencies, such as NIH and DOD, have shifted significant portions of their budgets towards supporting large scale, multi-project clinical activities of both academic institutions and companies. The funding agencies put forth great effort in creating and allocating budgets to programs and mechanisms that allow implementation of such scientific work. These include RFPs, U19s, grants and contracts solicited through Roadmap programs, and other opportunities, with fund proposals for over $5M. Such large scale solicitations fund advanced clinical trials, construction projects, product development, building centers of excellence, and more. In addition, in recent years, virtually all funding institutes within NIH allow for large scale projects to be submitted through the main unsolicited (investigator initiated) route, pending a brief institutional pre-approval process.

Being multi-project in nature, such applications require multidisciplinary collaborations with multiple laboratories and organizations, often bringing together academic and industry partners, and numerous commercial subcontractors. As such, creating an application can be a particularly daunting task, requiring a great deal of coordination between all partners, and skilled and experienced project management focus in order to integrate the scientific and technical sections for a single and coherent presentation. In addition, such large scale applications require submission of large and complex budgets for which detailed justifications must be added to complement the specific scientific and research plan presented. Lastly, these programs define very specific regulations that must be followed. The brief periods typically allotted between the dates of publication and submission add another source of pressure.

FreeMind’s team is particularly adept at large scale funding opportunities. We take it upon ourselves to devise a timeline for completion of the project, coordinate the specific tasks among all partners and collect all relevant scientific and technical sections in a timely manner. We ensure that all the components are integrated into a cohesive, focused, and competitive proposal. We follow the submission and post submission processes, and aid the clients in any negotiations that are necessary to get the award. Our expert consultants, analysts, managers and writers have extensive experience allowing them to identify the weakness, scientific or administrative, and strengthen them to produce a competitive and winning application.

Non dilutive funding is available for every conceivable kind of research or development effort, whether it is an academic or industry project. Government agencies, as well as state organizations and private foundations, release daily hundreds of different solicitations covering topics that are of interest to public health and medical and life science research. Although these are just a small portion of the total number of awards granted annually by NIH, DOD and other such organizations, they represent a great funding opportunity for researchers within industry and academia. A greater number of awards are granted to unsolicited investigator initiated projects, focusing on virtually every field and every stage of research and product development. Research funded covers all ranges of scientific endeavors, from basic science, whose applications are not yet known, to product-oriented and translational research, clinical trials, training grants, and construction projects to provide facilities for research and medical care.

Funding agencies cover very small to very large scopes of projects. The NIH has mechanisms to fund exploratory research, where only an initial direction is being investigated to see if it’s worth pursuing. These are typically of short duration and a more limited budget. Standard R01 grants are geared towards research in progress, driven by a hypothesis and supported by strong preliminary data. These projects typically last up to 5 years, with a budget of $1-3M. It is important to stress and clarify that ALL entities are eligible for funding from such sources and are eligible to receive such awards, including for-profit companies, foreign entities and academic research organizations. In addition to these, American small businesses are also eligible for SBIR and STTR grants, geared towards development of products with commercial potential. Large scale grants and contracts offer sizable sources of funding of greater than $5M to cover large scale clinical trials, major construction projects and more.

FreeMind Group helps researchers in every field, every stage, and every scope of biomedical research and development, and for all research entities, academic and industry alike. In many cases, a process that started in an early pre-clinical stage application and award has then grown to clinical stages awards.