Program: The goal for exploratory/developmental bioengineering research grants (EBRG)  from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is to foster the exploration and development of innovative technologies, models, techniques, designs, and methods that have the potential to substantially advance biomedical research by infusing principles and concepts from the quantitative sciences to transform our understanding of biological, clinical or translational science.

Specific interests within the Exploratory/Developmental Bioengineering Research Grants program include but are not limited to:

1) The development of technologies and integrated devices for improved personal exposure assessment.  A particular emphasis is on the development of technologies that will enable untargeted, agnostic, associations between exposures and disease in support of the exposome concept.

2) The development of technologies to enable research into the mechanisms of response to environmental exposures.  This includes the development of ‘omics technologies and systems modeling techniques to assess the differential response of biological networks to environmental perturbations.

3) The development of moderate to high throughput screens for the assessment of potential toxicants.  A particular emphasis is on the development of model systems that more closely reflect the response of humans including engineered 3D tissue systems originating from human tissues and induced pluripotent cells and the development of humanized animal models such as mouse models with enhanced genetic diversity similar to human populations.

Deadlines:  February 16, 2013, June 16, 2013, and October 16, 2013.

For more information, go to: http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PA-12-284.html.