Superfund Basic Research Program.

The Superfund Basic Research Program (SBRP) was created as a network of multi-and interdisciplinary teams of researchers to address the broad, complex health and environmental issues that arise from the multimedia nature of hazardous waste sites. Assembling researchers from diverse disciplines to focus on a unifying theme has provided the opportunity to advance the science in a more effective, efficient, and resource-leveraged manner. Furthermore, establishing multidisciplinary research programs has provided a more comprehensive understanding of complex environmental issues. The knowledge gained through these research efforts has proven useful in supporting the decisions made by state, local, and federal agencies, private organizations, and industry related to the management of hazardous substances.

In addition to supporting multi- and interdisciplinary research, the SBRP has considered community outreach, training of graduate students and postdoctoral candidates, and translation and communication of its research findings to be important in realizing its full potential.

This current solicitation marks the beginning of a new phase for the SBRP; that is, the change from a competition held once every five years for five-year awards to an annual competition for awards of up to five years. The overall intent of this change is to enhance the ability of the SBRP to be more responsive to emerging issues by taking advantage of new and promising technologies as they arise to address the complexities associated with exposure to hazardous substances. This change will also provide the scientific community more opportunities to compete for SBRP funding and the ability to revise and resubmit applications in a timely fashion.

Because the SBRP is a large continuing program, altering the competition cycle from once every five years to an annual competition is a complex undertaking. To implement this change in a logical and systematic manner will necessitate that there be a distribution of new and competing applications submitted over the next couple of years. Accordingly, half of the current programs will submit applications under this solicitation, and the remaining half will submit applications in next year's solicitation. New applications will be accepted in both years.

As the legacy of human activity, continues to expand, biomedical research and environmental and engineering sciences must act in close partnership to address the complex environmental challenges of the future. For the past 16 years, the NIEHS has encouraged and fostered partnerships among the diverse disciplines of science by creating, through the SBRP, multiproject, multidisciplinary programs, each of which is focused on a central theme. However, until recently, strong interdisciplinary research, which brings different scientific disciplines together to study a common hypothesis, has been hampered by limitations in technologies. Technological advances--for example, "-omics" technologies (genomics, proteomics, metabonomics, etc.); molecular, cellular, and whole animal imaging methodologies; miniaturized tools/technologies (i.e., at the micro- and nanolevel); and improved cyber-infrastructure and bioinformatics tools to gather, assimilate, and interrogate large diverse data sets--have the capacity to stimulate interdisciplinary research.

Thus, the goals and objectives of this request for applications (RFA) are to encourage the use of technological advances, as appropriate, to support multiproject, interdisciplinary research programs. The intent of applying these technologies is to enhance risk assessment and remediation decisions by improving our understanding of the health and environmental consequences associated with contaminants found at hazardous waste sites, and to develop improved strategies and technologies for cleaning up these sites. It is expected that each interdisciplinary research program will develop an overall conceptual theme that fosters collaborative interactions, whereby projects are integrated and specific emphasis is placed on interactions between the biomedical and nonbiomedical research projects. Such interactions promote synergistic knowledge, which has the potential to 1) improve our understanding of the relationship between exposure and disease, 2) promote the development of a range of primary prevention strategies, 3) translate into lower cleanup costs, and 4) allow for the refinement of human and ecological risk assessments. All are important goals of the SBRP.

The NIEHS considers research supported by the SBRP to be an accountable enterprise. This accountability derives from the supposition that the evolution and maturation of hypothesis-driven basic research leads to increased opportunities for the translation of results into applied, "product-oriented" research directions. It is this evolution, combined with the integration of biomedical and nonbiomedical research within a thematic framework, that allows for environmental synthesis and its application to real-life problems facing the nation's cleanup efforts. Ultimately, the knowledge gained through these efforts should reduce the burden of human illness and dysfunction from environmental causes. Therefore, the scientific themes and research topics included in research proposals submitted by applicants should be cognizant of and reflect the mandates and goals of the SBRP.

The scientific topics that are appropriate for this RFA to meet the goals and the objectives of the SBRP basically cover almost all aspects of scientific and intellectual inquiry and methodology that are directly related to understanding the relationship between exposure to hazardous substances and human health, impacts of hazardous substances on ecosystems, and strategies to understand the physical, chemical, and biological processes affecting chemicals in environmental media, as well as methods and approaches to effectively reduce the amount and toxicity of hazardous substances. However, for the purposes of this RFA, this research must be in context of the chemicals considered appropriate for study. These include 1) hazardous substances found with some frequency at Superfund sites, 2) hazardous breakdown products of such substances formed in environmental media by physical, chemical, or biological (e.g., plants, microorganisms, etc.) processes, 3) hazardous metabolites of the above substances or their breakdown products formed in humans or experimental animals, and 4) chemicals with structural similarity to hazardous substances found at Superfund sites.

Although novel, innovative, cutting-edge research projects are the nucleus of an SBRP grant, it is the intent of the SBRP that the research activities be integrated into an interdisciplinary program. In support of this goal, the NIEHS requires the establishment of cores. Each grant application is required to have an Administrative Core, a Research Translation Core, and at least one Research Support Core. Outreach and Training Cores may also be included in support of achieving a truly multidisciplinary approach to hazardous substances research.

The NIEHS intends to commit approximately $27 million in fiscal year 2005 to fund 8-10 new and/or competitive continuation grants in response to this RFA. Applicants may request a project period of up to five years. The maximum budget that can be requested is $2.1 million in direct costs for the first year. The budgets for each subsequent year may not exceed an escalation of 3% on recurring direct costs. Facilities and administrative costs incurred by including third-party consortia or subcontracts in the application will not contribute to the $2.1 million cap in direct costs.

This RFA will use the NIH multiproject (P42) award mechanism. Beginning with the current solicitation, an RFA will be issued on an annual basis. Applications that are not funded in the competition described in this RFA may be resubmitted as amended applications in subsequent SBRP solicitations. The anticipated award date is 1 April 2005.

The deadline for receipt of letters of intent is 13 February 2004, with 21 April 2004 the deadline for receipt of applications. Applications must be prepared using the PHS 398 research grant application instructions and forms (rev. 5/2001). The PHS 398 is available at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/ funding/phs398/phs398.html in an interactive format. Complete information on this RFA is located at http://grants1.nih.gov/ grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-ES-04-001.html

Contact: Claudia Thompson, Center for Risk and Integrated Sciences, Division of Extramural Research and Training, NIEHS, PO Box 12233, MD EC-27, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA, 919-541-4638, fax: [phone], e-mail: thompso1@ niehs.nih.gov; Beth Anderson, Center for Risk and Integrated Sciences, Division of Extramural Research and Training, NIEHS, PO Box 12233, MD EC-27, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA, 919-541-4481, fax: [phone], e-mail: tainer@ niehs.nih.gov; or William Suk, Center for Risk and Integrated Sciences, Division of Extramural Research and Training, NIEHS, PO Box 12233, MD EC-27, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA, 919-541-0797, fax: [phone], e-mail: [e-mail]. Reference: RFA-ES-04-001