DoD Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Therapeutic Idea Award | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The DoD Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Therapeutic Idea Award (Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-15-ALSRP-TIA) is a U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA) funding program under CFDA 12.420 (Military Medical Research and Development) that supports early-stage, high-impact concepts aimed at improving treatment options for ALS. The program is structured to push forward new therapeutic directions, especially those that could realistically translate into better patient outcomes, rather than supporting broad basic science efforts that primarily explain how ALS works. In other words, the emphasis is on practical therapeutic discovery and enabling tools that move the field toward treatments, not on pathophysiology-focused studies that stop short of treatment relevance.

At the core of this opportunity is the expectation that projects will be hypothesis-driven. Applicants are expected to present a well-formulated, testable hypothesis backed by strong scientific rationale and a clear line of sight to translational value. The award is meant for ideas that are still early in development, including drug discovery concepts, treatment discovery approaches, and target discovery strategies. Importantly, the solicitation makes it clear that projects mainly aimed at investigating ALS disease mechanisms, without a direct therapeutic discovery angle, fall outside the intent and scope of the mechanism.

A key update highlighted for FY15 is that this Therapeutic Idea Award also welcomes certain topic areas that were previously placed under the ALSRP Therapeutic Development Award. Specifically, it supports the development, validation, and application of high-throughput screening platforms that can either define new therapeutic targets or identify lead candidate agents for ALS treatment. It also supports the development, modification, or validation of preclinical model systems that can be used to assess lead compounds and potential therapeutics, including pharmacological and pharmacokinetic testing. These models are framed not only as project-specific tools, but as improvements that could benefit the wider ALS research community by strengthening the preclinical toolkit used to evaluate potential therapies.

The program draws a clear boundary between early therapeutic discovery and later-stage product development. Applicants whose work goes beyond discovery and into more advanced preclinical development activities are directed toward the ALSRP Therapeutic Development Award instead. This positioning reflects the program's role in seeding novel, potentially transformative ideas before they are mature enough for late-stage development mechanisms.

Innovation and potential impact are explicitly described as the top priorities for this award. The solicitation states that even applications with excellent scientific merit can miss the mark if they are not sufficiently innovative or if they do not offer a strong potential for meaningful impact on ALS treatment. Another distinctive feature is its stance on preliminary data: the mechanism is not designed to reward proposals built around extensive preliminary results. While preliminary data may be included, the application is expected to stand on the strength of the concept, its rationale, and the magnitude of potential payoff, rather than on already-established findings. This is meant to encourage applicants to propose bolder, earlier ideas that could open new therapeutic directions.

From an administrative standpoint, the opportunity was posted on March 18, 2015, with a closing date of August 20, 2015, and an archive date of September 19, 2015. The total estimated funding was $3.2 million, with an expectation of making about four awards. The funding instrument types listed include cooperative agreement and grant, and there is no cost sharing or matching requirement. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is open to any type of entity as long as it meets any additional criteria or clarifications provided in the full announcement. For technical access issues related to the full announcement, the CDMRP Help Desk is listed as the support contact at 301-682-5507.

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