Martin Delaney Collaboratory Towards an HIV 1 Cure (U19) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Martin Delaney Collaboratory Towards an HIV-1 Cure (U19) funding opportunity (RFA-AI-10-009) is an NIH cooperative agreement program led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in partnership with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). It is designed to support large, team-based research programs that directly tackle one of the biggest barriers to curing HIV: the ability of HIV-1 to persist in people whose virus is otherwise well controlled by suppressive antiretroviral therapy. Even when standard treatment drives viral load down to undetectable levels, HIV can remain in long-lived cellular and tissue reservoirs, creating a stable source for rebound if therapy stops. This initiative is meant to push the science beyond control and toward eradication by building a stronger, more actionable understanding of latency and persistence, and by translating that understanding into early testing of cure-focused interventions.

The FOA lays out four core scientific areas that applicants are expected to address within a coordinated “collaboratory” structure. First, it supports basic research aimed at identifying and characterizing the cellular reservoirs that harbor HIV-1 in treated individuals, including the biology of those reservoir cells and the mechanisms that allow the virus to remain silent or partially active despite therapy. Second, it calls for the development of assays that are physiologically relevant, meaning lab tests and model systems that better reflect what happens in the human body and that incorporate a range of cell types that may carry latent virus or allow ongoing replication even under effective drug regimens. Third, it encourages systematic screening of drug candidates that can specifically target latent or persistent HIV, which can include approaches that either “shock” virus out of latency for clearance, permanently silence it, or selectively eliminate infected cells. Fourth, it funds development and initial testing of new agents or strategies intended to eradicate HIV-1, moving promising ideas toward translational proof-of-concept rather than remaining solely descriptive or theoretical.

A defining feature of this opportunity is that it requires both basic science and translational activities as essential, integrated components of the overall program. In other words, it is not intended to fund isolated projects; it is intended to fund a coordinated set of projects and cores that collectively span discovery through early-stage development. Another key requirement is collaboration with a private sector entity, reflecting NIH’s intent to connect academic and nonprofit research strengths with industry capabilities in drug development, assay development, manufacturability, or other commercialization-adjacent expertise that can speed progress toward practical cure strategies.

The mechanism of support is a U19 cooperative agreement. This is important because it signals substantial scientific and programmatic involvement from NIH compared with a standard research project grant. U19 awards typically support multi-project, multi-investigator programs under a unified leadership and governance plan, often with shared resources and defined milestones, which fits the “collaboratory” concept and the push toward coordinated advances rather than incremental, disconnected studies.

In terms of funding and scale, NIH announced an estimated total of $8.5 million available for fiscal year 2011 from NIAID and NIMH combined, with an expectation of making one to two awards. That combination of relatively large total dollars and a small number of awards indicates an intention to support a limited number of major, highly integrated consortia with enough resources to run multiple projects, shared cores, and coordinated translational work.

Eligibility is broad and includes public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofits (including 501(c)(3) and certain non-501(c)(3) entities), for-profit organizations (including small businesses and other for-profits), and various levels of government (state, county, city/township, special districts), as well as tribal governments and tribal organizations. It also explicitly includes organizations such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving institutions, tribally controlled colleges and universities, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, eligible federal agencies, and U.S. territories or possessions. The FOA states there is no cost sharing or matching requirement.

Administratively, the opportunity was posted June 28, 2010, with an original and current closing date of November 4, 2010, and an archive date of December 5, 2010. It is categorized as discretionary funding, uses the cooperative agreement instrument type, and falls under health-related research activity categories associated with CFDA numbers 93.856 (Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Research) and 93.242 (Mental Health Research Grants), reflecting the joint NIAID and NIMH participation and the cross-cutting relevance of HIV persistence to both infectious disease and behavioral/mental health contexts. Overall, the program’s central aim is to expand the knowledge base on HIV latency and persistence in ways that directly enable the design, development, and evaluation of eradication strategies, using a structured, collaborative, public-private model capable of advancing the field toward a durable cure.

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