NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Institutes of Health will award grants of up to $150,000 per year to fund institutions and organizations that develop new small molecule probes that may be used to investigate biological functioning in the nervous system, NIH said today.
The research could include using a variety of approaches for developing small molecule probes possessing attributes that will enable investigators to use them in future pharmacological studies. These programs are expected to have both biological and chemical components.
The biological parts of these programs could include studies involving gene expression in the nervous system, including effects on transcription, translation, or RNA splicing; protein-protein interactions important to neural or glial cell signaling; cellular or molecular phenotypes relevant to nervous system; and molecular targets expressed in the nervous system and measured via biochemical or cell-based assays of activity.
NIH institutes involved in the research include the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute on Drug Abuse; National Institute on Aging; National Institute of Mental Health; National Eye Institute; National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.