Funding Opportunity Number: PAR-25-331
Deadlines: March 11, 2025, June 16, 2025, July 16, 2025
Background
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive, degenerative disorder of the brain and is the most common form of dementia of the aging. AD is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. Prominent behavioral manifestations of AD include memory impairments and decline in other cognitive domains. Currently, more than 6 million Americans, most of them age 65 or older, live with AD. AD is clearly becoming a national health crisis affecting diverse populations of Americans across all regions of the country, and the total annual payments of health care for people living with AD are projected to total more than $1 trillion in 2050. In addition, disparities in AD have been noted for some racial/ethnic groups and other under-resourced and/or underserved populations (e.g. rural, sexual gender minority, etc.). In response to this looming public health crisis, the National Alzheimer’s Project Ac (NAPA) was signed into law in 2011. The primary research goal of the NAPA is to prevent the onset of and develop effective treatments for AD and AD-related dementias (ADRD) by 2025. As described in the National Plan, ADRDs include Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (VCID), Lewy Body Dementias (LBD) and Multiple Etiology Dementias (MED) based on similarities in clinical symptoms and brain pathologies between these and pathologic AD and/or clinical AD. As part of the strategic planning process to implement NAPA, NIH AD Research Summits were held in 2012, 2015, 2018, 2021, and 2024 and identified research priorities and strategies needed to accelerate basic research and the development of effective therapies. Similarly, Dementia Care and Caregiving Research Summits were held in 2017, 2020, and 2023 and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementia (ADRD) Summits were held in 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2022. The Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias professional judgment budget is published annually to establish research and funding priorities. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) was developed in response to the recommendations of the AD/ADRD Research Summits to support interdisciplinary research to understand the heterogeneity and multifactorial etiology of AD/ADRD.
Research Objectives
This NOFO invites applications proposing research on current topics in AD/ADRD. Further information on the high-priority topics of interest will be announced through a series of Notices published subsequent to this NOFO.
Outreach Pro
NIA is committed to ensuring that clinical research studies have diverse and inclusive representation, particularly of those communities understudied in research. NIA’s National Strategy for Recruitment and Participation in Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias Clinical Research provides an emphasis on the urgent need for more research volunteers and from various populations and it encourages examining research study populations across multiple factors such as age, race, ethnicity, sex, education, socioeconomic status, geographic location, comorbidities, and cognitive status. To increase participation in AD/ADRD clinical trials, NIA developed a public facing tool, OutreachPro. OutreachPro is an online recruitment materials generator that enables grantees to develop customizable and culturally appropriate materials in multiple languages to raise awareness of, and interest in, AD/ADRD clinical trials. Grantees and research teams are encouraged but not required to use this free online resource to enhance their recruitment and retention plans and related activities for their NIA-funded clinical studies.
For more information, please see the opportunity webpage.