Assay Development for High Throughput Molecular Screening (R21) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH funding opportunity "Assay Development for High Throughput Molecular Screening (R21)" (Funding Opportunity Number PAR-10-182) is a discretionary grant program designed to speed up the discovery of new research tools, specifically molecular probes that help scientists understand biological function. The core idea is to fund researchers to build, refine, or adapt biological assays so they can run reliably in automated high throughput screening (HTS) environments. In practice, this means turning a biologically meaningful assay (for example, one that reports on an enzyme, receptor, signaling pathway, or cellular phenotype) into an "HTS-ready" format that can be executed at scale with robotics, standardized reagents, and robust data readouts. Once an assay reaches that level of readiness, it can be handed off for large-scale screening to find small molecules that modulate the target or pathway, generating starting points for chemical probes and follow-on research.

A key feature of the program is its connection to the Molecular Libraries Production Centers Network (MLPCN), which was set up to run large screening campaigns against large libraries of diverse small-molecule structures. The FOA is part of the broader NIH Molecular Libraries and Imaging Roadmap Initiative, meaning the intent is not just to support one-off assay development for a single lab, but to strengthen a national pipeline where assays developed by investigators can be screened centrally, producing widely useful chemical tools that the scientific community can use to interrogate biology. In other words, the award supports the critical early step of transforming a promising biological concept into a screening-capable assay that can generate tractable hits when exposed to a large chemical collection.

The mechanism of support is a modified NIH Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant (R21). R21 awards are commonly used for early-stage, high-impact, or proof-of-concept work where the goal is to demonstrate feasibility and generate strong preliminary results, rather than to fund a long, mature research program. Here, that exploratory-developmental emphasis fits the goal: applicants are expected to focus on the engineering and validation needed to make an assay robust, reproducible, and compatible with automated HTS workflows, including considerations like signal-to-noise performance, assay stability, miniaturization, throughput, and the ability to generate consistent results suitable for screening.

For funding levels, NIH anticipated approximately $6,000,000 total available in 2011 under this announcement, spread across two due dates, with an estimated 30 total awards that year. Because assay types and development needs can vary widely, NIH noted that award size and project duration could differ from one project to another, and that final totals would depend on the number of applications, their quality, the proposed timelines, and the requested budgets. The listed award ceiling in the opportunity summary is $100,000, though applicants would still need to align budgets with the FOA-specific guidance and typical R21 constraints as described in the full announcement.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of organizations across the public, private, nonprofit, and academic sectors. Eligible applicants include state, county, city, township, and special district governments; public and private institutions of higher education; independent school districts; public housing authorities and Indian housing authorities; nonprofits both with and without 501(c)(3) status (excluding higher education institutions in that category); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses. The announcement also explicitly includes a wide range of additional eligible applicants such as federally eligible agencies, faith-based and community-based organizations, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, tribal organizations (including those other than federally recognized tribal governments), regional organizations, US territories or possessions, and non-US entities (foreign organizations). The opportunity states there is no cost-sharing or matching requirement, which means applicants are not required to contribute non-federal funds as a condition of the award.

Administratively, the opportunity was posted and created on April 30, 2010, with an original and current closing date of October 29, 2010, and an archive date of November 29, 2010. It is categorized under Health, with CFDA number 93.310 (Trans-NIH Research Support). The sponsoring agency is the National Institutes of Health, and the full announcement was made available through the NIH grants guide, with support contacts routed through the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) webmaster for access or linking issues.

Overall, this FOA is best understood as a targeted investment in the often time-consuming but essential work of assay development and assay translation into an HTS-compatible format. The payoff NIH is aiming for is a steady stream of high-quality, automation-ready assays that can be screened at scale through the MLPCN, enabling the identification of bioactive small molecules and ultimately delivering new molecular probes that can accelerate basic and translational biomedical research.

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