The PhRMA Foundation Faculty Starter Grant in Translational Medicine offers financial support to individuals beginning independent research careers at the faculty level at an accredited U.S. university.
Program Vision
Translational medicine aims to bring scientific research and technological advancements from the laboratory to the clinic, where they can enhance the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. This includes adapting hypothesis-driven basic research discoveries in cells, tissues, and animals for application in humans and then taking the knowledge of what did and didn’t work in the clinic back to the bench. The PhRMA Foundation seeks research proposals that focus on identifying unmet clinical needs and developing new diagnostic, therapeutic, and computational approaches and technologies to improve patient care.
Scope of Research
Research areas could include, but are not limited to:
- Development of innovative diagnostic or therapeutic approaches in human-relevant model systems for improving treatment in disease areas with unmet clinical need
- Development and application of precision medicine approaches (molecular epidemiology, genetics, epigenetics, multi-omics) to stratify patients, elucidate inter-individual variability in humans, and inform therapeutic decision-making
- Development and validation of novel surrogate, intermediate, or digital clinical endpoints for currently used treatments or those in development for humans
- Development and validation of human-relevant experimental and computational approaches that reduce reliance on animal testing
- Hypothesis-driven, innovative modeling and simulation approaches (including computational and AI-enabled methods) that include biological validation to support clinical decision-making
- Translational pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) that bridge animal and in vitro data to humans, including PK/PD and PK-biomarker modeling to predict clinical outcomes
- Hypothesis-based target, biomarker, and model validation using human data or human-derived systems
Requirements
All proposals must clearly state a therapeutically relevant hypothesis. Applicants are expected to work with clinical collaborators to identify unmet clinical needs. Proposals that aim to corroborate results from model systems must include methods to validate findings in humans or human-relevant systems. While preferences are given to studies where applicants collect human samples, reasoning must be clearly stated in the research plan if using only human data from pre-existing biobanks.
Computational approaches must include a clear and feasible plan for translational validation to human-relevant systems. Proposals that involve AI approaches (i.e., data-driven ML/DL) must clearly document and reference the methodology, explain the data curation process (sources, quality, quantity), and detail the validation process.
Nonresponsive
Projects focused solely on characterization, mapping, profiling, or descriptive biology without an explicit scientific hypothesis on a therapeutic decision or target are not responsive. Proposals with only animal models and no human components will not be considered.
Human components could include but are not limited to:
- Humanized models with justification
- Clinical biospecimens
- Real-world clinical datasets
- Clinical studies
ELIGIBILITY
- Applicants (U.S. and non-U.S. citizens) must be full-time, promotion-eligible, research-intensive faculty at a PhD-granting accredited U.S. university by the time of LOI submission.
- Applicants are ineligible if their faculty status began before January 1, 2025.
- Applicants are ineligible if their last terminal degree was conferred before January 1, 2017.
- Applicants must be eligible to apply for independent external research funding by their university.
- Applicants should not have other substantial sources of research funding, excluding intramural funding or startup funding from their university. Preference will be given to applicants with startup funding less than $750,000.
- Applicants are ineligible if they are the principal investigator (PI) of an R or K series award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, or other substantial financial award from any grant-making institution. Generally, funding over $250,000 a year is considered substantial, unless you are the PI of a grant where funds go to training others. If this is the case, explain in your extended letter.
- Applicants are ineligible if they do not have at least three first author publications.
- Only one applicant per lab may apply in the Translational Medicine Program. Labs must select either a predoc, a postdoc, or a faculty member.