Purpose and Research Focus

The Penn Center for Musculoskeletal Disorders (PCMD) will continue to enhance the research productivity of, and provide critical resources and programs to, investigators to address multidisciplinary research strategies for musculoskeletal problems. The overall goal of this Center is to promote cooperative interactions among investigators, accelerate and enrich the effectiveness and efficiency of ongoing research, foster new collaborations and new research, and ultimately, translate our research efforts into better and new therapies for musculoskeletal disorders. The central theme of the Center will continue to be “Musculoskeletal Tissue Injury and Repair”. The Pilot/Feasibility Project submissions should be related musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair which is the broad focus of the Center.

Eligibility

• Only Full Members are eligible.  If you are not currently a member, please visit the membership page.
• Categories of applicants include: 1) Established investigators with a proposal to test the feasibility of a new or innovative idea in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair representing a clear and distinct departure from their ongoing research, 2) Established investigators with no previous work in musculoskeletal tissue injury and repair interested in testing the applicability of their expertise on a problem in this area, and 3) New investigators without significant extramural grant support as a Principal Investigator to develop a new project.
• Pilot and Feasibility Grants must use at least one of the Center’s Research Cores.
• Pilot project awardees are eligible for one year, with a second year to be considered. The second year of funding, the dollar amount of which would only be for up to half the year one budget, will be considered based on the progress report submitted after the first year of funding and funding availability in the Center. Please note that second year funding will most often not be awarded, and when awarded, will be done so primarily to new investigators; second year funding to senior investigators will be quite rare.
• Budgets will be for $25-50,000 per year and timelines should be for one or two years.
• It is expected that these Pilot grants will lead to funding through other independent, extramural mechanisms. Therefore, the likelihood of future extramural funding will enter into the evaluation of these proposals.

Format

• Applications should be formatted loosely in the style of an NIH R03 grant (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-12-045.html).  The main body of the application (Specific Aims through Approach: sections 4-7 below) should be no more than 5 pages total. The format is:

Cover Page (not NIH face page) with grant title, PI name (and co-PI name if applicable), affiliation, contact information Budget and brief justification (note that equipment is not allowed) (Please use form  PHS398, Page 4) NIH Biosketch of PI (and co-PI if applicable) (in the new NIH format) Specific Aims Significance   Innovation Approach Brief Statement of Category of Investigator per guidelines above Brief Statement of How this Funding will lead to other Extramural Funding Human Subjects and/or Vertebrate Animal Subjects (if applicable) Consultants (if applicable) Literature Cited Certification of Patient Oriented Research (if applicable)

The completed application should be uploaded on the PCMD website as a single PDF by Thursday, February 22, 2018.  Upload your submission at

https://www.med.upenn.edu/pcmd/pilot-grant-upload-form.html