Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA AG 19 011
The Integrative Omics to Enhance Therapeutics Development for Healthy Aging opportunity (RFA AG-19-011) is a National Institutes of Health cooperative agreement from the Department of Health and Human Services focused on turning large-scale, multi-omics data into actionable leads for therapeutics that support healthy aging. The central idea is to identify biological "signatures" of people who not only live a long time, but also maintain exceptional health span, meaning they show protection against multiple age-related conditions. Rather than studying a single disease in isolation, the project aims to discover omics profiles that reflect broad resilience to aging biology and then use those profiles to guide drug discovery and development.
This FOA uses a phased innovation structure under the UH2/UH3 mechanism, which is designed to support projects that begin with a planning and feasibility phase (UH2) and then transition, if milestones are met, into an implementation and expansion phase (UH3). It is explicitly labeled "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," which means the work is expected to be discovery, computational, translational, and preclinical in nature rather than testing interventions in humans. Because it is a cooperative agreement, NIH staff will have substantial scientific involvement during the project, typically through milestone-driven management, close coordination around data sharing, and alignment with related NIH efforts.
Only one award is expected, with an award ceiling of $3.3 million, indicating NIH intended to fund a single large, integrated team rather than multiple independent projects. The FOA encourages an interdisciplinary research team capable of spanning human cohort science, multi-omics generation and interpretation, bioinformatics and machine learning, comparative biology, and translational pharmacology. Eligibility is broad and includes universities, nonprofits, for-profit organizations, small businesses, and various government and tribal entities, which reflects NIH's interest in pulling together expertise across sectors.
Scientifically, the project revolves around integrating person-specific multi-omics measurements such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, collected across multiple tissues. A key requirement is that the human samples come from extensively phenotyped cohorts that include substantial numbers of long-lived individuals with characteristics of exceptionally healthy aging, along with appropriate control groups. The emphasis on extensive phenotyping matters because the program is not just looking for molecular differences; it is trying to link molecular patterns to detailed clinical and functional measures of aging, disease resistance, and overall health span.
The FOA lays out several specific components that the funded project is expected to deliver. First, it must harmonize and extend existing phenotypic data across the contributing studies so that phenomics can be applied to the omics findings. In practice, this means mapping and standardizing diverse clinical and behavioral variables (for example, cognitive performance, cardiometabolic traits, physical function, comorbidity profiles, medication exposures, and longitudinal outcomes) so they can be analyzed consistently alongside molecular readouts.
Second, the project must include comparative omics work in animal models by selecting species or strains with varying life spans and different rates of disease development. The goal here is to use cross-species comparisons to help distinguish which molecular features are likely to be fundamental determinants of longevity and resilience rather than cohort-specific artifacts. By comparing short-lived versus long-lived models, the team is expected to identify candidate mechanisms that track with life span and health span differences and may therefore be more promising as therapeutic targets.
Third, the initiative calls for developing computational and analytical tools that can identify omics profiles associated with exceptional longevity and healthy aging. This goes beyond running standard differential expression analyses; it implies the need for integrative, multi-layer methods that can combine multiple omics types across tissues, manage high dimensionality, account for confounders like sex, ancestry, lifestyle, and medication use, and ultimately define reproducible molecular "profiles" or signatures that correlate with protective aging phenotypes. Tool development may include pipelines for data cleaning and harmonization, integrative network modeling, pathway and causal inference approaches, and predictive modeling frameworks that can be validated across cohorts and tissues.
Fourth, the FOA expects the team to translate these signatures into therapeutic hypotheses using translational bioinformatics. Specifically, applicants are asked to leverage publicly available drug signature databases to identify molecules that could induce omics profiles similar to those seen in exceptionally healthy aging. Conceptually, this is a "signature matching" strategy: if a particular gene or protein expression pattern is linked to resilience, then compounds known to shift cells or tissues in that direction become candidates for repurposing or for informing new drug development. This component is intended to move the project from descriptive biology toward concrete, testable intervention ideas, even though the FOA does not allow clinical trials.
Fifth, a major expectation is active data exchange and coordination with other NIH and NIA supported omics initiatives and public-private partnerships. The FOA explicitly mentions efforts such as TOPMed and AMP-AD as examples of external programs where harmonization practices and shared analytic strategies can accelerate progress. This implies the funded team must plan for strong data management, standard formats, interoperable pipelines, and a willingness to align analyses with community standards, making results more comparable and more broadly usable.
Taken together, this opportunity is aimed at building an end-to-end discovery and translation pipeline centered on healthy aging: identify resilient individuals, characterize them with deep multi-tissue multi-omics, connect molecular patterns to rich phenotypes, compare against animal longevity models to strengthen biological interpretation, and then use computational drug signature resources to nominate therapeutic candidates that mimic protective aging biology. The intended output is not a single biomarker or one disease-specific target, but a refined set of multi-omics profiles and analytic tools that can guide therapeutics development for extending health span and reducing risk across multiple age-related conditions.Apply for RFA AG 19 011
- The Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Integrative Omics to Enhance Therapeutics Development for Healthy Aging (UH2/UH3 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
- Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.866.
- This funding opportunity was created on Jun 27, 2018.
- Applicants must submit their applications by Nov 14, 2018. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
- Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $3,300,000.00 in funding.
- The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
- Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).
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