Leveraging Data at Scale to Understand Natural Product Impacts on Whole Person Health (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA AT 24 008

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA AT 24 008

Leveraging Data at Scale to Understand Natural Product Impacts on Whole Person Health (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) is an NIH funding opportunity (RFA-AT-24-008) that supports research projects focused on building, adapting, or applying computational approaches to better understand how botanicals and other natural products may influence human biology in the context of whole person health. The core emphasis is on data-driven discovery: applicants are expected to bring together multiple distinct (orthogonal) chemical and/or biological datasets related to natural products and analyze them in ways that can produce new, testable hypotheses about biological activity, mechanisms, or broader health relevance. The opportunity is explicitly not for clinical trials, so the work is geared toward computational, informatics, and integrative analyses rather than interventional human studies.

A key requirement is true data integration at scale. Projects must leverage and merge multiple compatible or interoperable data sources and/or data types, rather than relying on a single dataset. In practice, this could include integrating chemical characterization data (for example, constituent profiles, metabolomics, or structural annotations) with biological readouts (such as gene expression, pathway activity, bioassay results, microbiome-related measures, or other omics and systems biology data). The goal is to use these combined views to generate insights that would not be reachable from one dataset alone, and to move toward hypotheses that can be validated in future experimental work (even if the validation itself is outside the scope of this particular award).

The NOFO encourages the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods, reflecting the expectation that applicants may need modern computational techniques to harmonize heterogeneous datasets, resolve inconsistencies, infer relationships, and identify patterns across large-scale data. Competitive projects are likely to emphasize robust computational tool development or adaptation, reproducible analytical workflows, and clear plans for how the integrated analyses will yield biologically meaningful, testable predictions about natural products in whole person health contexts. While tool development is supported, the intent is not tooling for its own sake; the computational work should be clearly connected to hypothesis generation about biological activity and health-relevant mechanisms.

This funding opportunity sits within the Consortium Advancing Research on Botanicals and Other Natural Products (CARBON) Program. CARBON is structured as a broader ecosystem of complementary efforts, and the NOFO notes additional program components, including the Botanical Dietary Supplements Translational Research Teams (RM1) mechanism and a Limited Competition Research Resource for Natural Product Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Data (R24). Taken together, this framing signals that the R01 projects are meant to contribute to a larger coordinated push to strengthen natural product research infrastructure, data resources, and translationally useful understanding, particularly by improving how disparate datasets can be combined and interpreted.

From an administrative standpoint, the award mechanism is an R01 research project grant under the NIH, categorized under health-related research funding activity. The original application due date listed is June 28, 2024, and the award ceiling is $500,000. The opportunity is open to a broad range of eligible applicants spanning public and private institutions of higher education, federal agencies, state and local governments, tribal governments and organizations, nonprofits (including both 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3) entities), for-profit organizations (other than small businesses), and small businesses. The eligibility list also explicitly highlights a variety of mission-driven and community-anchored organizations and institutions, including HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian serving institutions, AANAPISI institutions, faith-based or community-based organizations, non-U.S. entities (foreign organizations), and U.S. territories or possessions. This broad eligibility suggests an interest in drawing on diverse expertise and perspectives across computational science, natural products chemistry, biology, and whole person health research.

Overall, the opportunity funds computationally focused R01 projects that can integrate multiple natural product-related chemical and biological datasets, apply scalable analytics (including AI/ML where appropriate), and produce clear, testable hypotheses about how natural products may affect biological systems and whole person health, while aligning with the larger CARBON program goals and explicitly excluding clinical trial activity.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Leveraging Data at Scale to Understand Natural Product Impacts on Whole Person Health (R01 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): 93.213, 93.321.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-03-05.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-06-28. (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 $500,000.00 in funding.
• 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.

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