A Community Research Resource of Microbiome Derived Factors Modulating Host Physiology in Obesity, Digestive and Liver Diseases, and Nutrition (R24) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH funding opportunity RFA-DK-15-012, titled "A Community Research Resource of Microbiome Derived Factors Modulating Host Physiology in Obesity, Digestive and Liver Diseases, and Nutrition (R24)," supports the creation of a broadly shared research resource focused on gut (and related) microbiome components that influence human physiology and disease. The central goal is not simply to generate new microbiome associations, but to build a practical, community-facing toolkit that helps researchers move from correlations to actionable biological mechanisms. The resource is meant to accelerate the development of microbiome-based strategies to prevent and treat conditions tied to obesity, nutrition, and diseases of the liver, digestive tract, and exocrine pancreas by making key microbial strains, microbial products, and the supporting data and analysis methods widely available.

Applications are expected from multidisciplinary teams capable of identifying "key" members of the microbiota and the specific factors they produce that modulate host function, including both normal physiology and disease-related pathophysiology. In practical terms, this means teams should be able to connect microbiome variation to host outcomes in obesity and metabolic health, nutritional status and nutrient processing, and gastrointestinal, hepatic, and pancreatic disorders, then isolate the organisms and characterize the molecules responsible for those effects. The emphasis on dissemination signals that the end products should be organized, annotated, and distributed in a way that other investigators can readily use for hypothesis testing, replication, and intervention development, rather than remaining confined to the originating laboratory.

The community resource described in the announcement is intended to include several integrated deliverables. First, it should provide annotated genome sequences for the prioritized microbes, allowing researchers to understand genetic capabilities, metabolic pathways, and candidate biosynthetic gene clusters linked to bioactive products. Second, it should include cultures of those organisms, which is essential for experimental reproducibility and for translating sequence-based findings into mechanistic studies. Third, it should provide chemical structures of the major compounds produced by those microbes that influence host biology; this points to a strong expectation for microbial metabolite discovery, isolation, structural elucidation, and functional annotation. Fourth, it should make available the datasets used to identify the key microbes and compounds in the first place, enabling validation, reanalysis, and methodological benchmarking by the wider community. Finally, the program anticipates that new or improved software and analytic methods may be needed to detect and prioritize the relevant microbes and molecules, and it encourages the development and sharing of those tools as part of the resource.

Administratively, this is an NIH discretionary grant using the R24 activity mechanism, which is commonly used to support shared resources, infrastructure, and community-enabling capabilities rather than single-project hypothesis testing alone. The estimated total funding amount listed is $6,000,000, and the opportunity indicates there is no cost sharing or matching requirement. The posting and creation dates are June 19, 2015, with an original and current closing date of October 19, 2016, and an archive date of November 19, 2016, meaning this specific announcement is historical, but it reflects a clear NIH priority area around microbiome resources for metabolic and digestive diseases.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations, spanning public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofits (including those with and without 501(c)(3) status), for-profit organizations (excluding the "small business only" restriction, since both small businesses and other for-profits are listed), and multiple levels of government (state, county, city/township, special district). The eligibility language also explicitly includes various mission-focused institutions and community-based entities, such as HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian serving institutions, and faith-based or community-based organizations, as well as eligible federal agencies. Non-U.S. (foreign) institutions are not eligible to apply as the applicant organization, although non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations may participate, and "foreign components" are allowed as defined by NIH policy, which typically means that discrete parts of the project may be performed outside the U.S. when justified and properly documented.

Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a push to standardize and scale microbiome mechanistic research by creating an openly accessible set of microbial strains, genomic and chemical annotations, underlying datasets, and software workflows that the broader obesity, nutrition, liver, pancreatic, and digestive disease research communities can use. By lowering the barriers to obtaining well-characterized microbes and their bioactive products, and by making the associated data and analytical approaches transparent and reusable, the program aims to speed up the path from discovery to intervention, including the rational design of microbiome-based preventions and therapies.

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