NIDDK AMP-CMD Opportunity Pool Handbook

Project background

The Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Common Metabolic Diseases (AMP-CMD), funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) via several awards, is a public-private partnership to identify drivers of common metabolic diseases, including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, chronic kidney disease, obesity, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and heart failure, type 2 diabetes/prediabetes, autoimmune diabetes, and inflammation. AMP-CMD supports the generation and analysis of genetic association results, epigenomic annotations, and functional studies, and the representation of these results in the open-access Common Metabolic Diseases Knowledge Portal.

The AMP-CMD award “The next iteration of the AMP-T2D Knowledge Portal” (UM1DK105554), for the project period 5/1/2015 - 6/30/2025, includes an Opportunity Pool (OP). The OP provides $500,000 per year total cost, with a total allocation of $2,500,000 over the project period, to fund projects aligned with AMP-CMD goals that address gaps in the currently funded research. The AMP-CMD Data Coordinating Center (DCC) at the Broad Institute serves as the administrative hub of the OP. In this round under the UM1 award (Summer 2022), applications for year 3 are being considered. See Figure 1 for an overview of the OP application and award timeline.

Figure 1. Timing of OP proposal solicitation, approval, and awards over the five years of the AMP-CMD UM1 award (8/20/2020 - 6/30/2025).

Solicitation of Opportunity Pool proposals

Potential research areas for OP funding are identified by surveying the AMP-CMD NIDDK Steering Committee to identify needs and gaps in the currently funded projects. These are prioritized with guidance from NIDDK, and then compiled into a yearly Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The survey and prioritization process will be repeated for each new OP funding period (i.e., each year). The FOA will be publicized both internally to AMP-CMD and externally, via outreach from the Common Metabolic Diseases Knowledge Portal.

View the FOA for Year 3 funding

Review and approval process for Opportunity Pool proposals

Applications will be reviewed by the AMP-CMD NIDDK Steering Committee and voted upon by designated voting members of the committee: four principal investigators from each NIDDK award, plus one NIDDK program officer. The voting members are:

NEWS Team: Jose Florez, Anna Gloyn, Karen Mohlke, and Steve Parker
Penn Team: Struan Grant, Patrick Seale, Benjamin Voight, Wenli Yang (Alternate: Daniel Rader)
Portal Team: Mike Boehnke, Noël Burtt, Jason Flannick, Kyle Gaulton (Alternate: Thomas Keane)
TOPMed Team: Alisa Manning, James Meigs, Jerome Rotter, Robert Sladek
NIDDK: Beena Akolkar

Proposals will be evaluated on 3 scientific and 2 budgetary criteria.

Scientific criteria:

• Urgency: Is this work needed now, or could it wait for standard grant scheme funding?
• Impact: Will the work make a difference in the AMP-CMD program? Will it expand the scientific reach of the program by generating data on less-studied disease areas or tissues within the AMP-CMD research plan?
• Collaboration: Will the work enlarge the AMP-CMD community by engaging multiple members and/or bringing in new consortium members?

Budgetary criteria:

• Budget: Will the expected results represent a good value for the expenditure?
• Target: Is the project appropriate for OP funding, or is it better suited for an FNIH RFP?

Each voting member will rank these criteria for each proposal between 1 (excellent) and 5 (poor). The rankings will each be weighted and converted into an overall score as follows:

Considerations for budget planning for OP proposals

• We encourage applicants to spread funding out over two or more years, in order to limit carryforward requests and give time to develop partnerships within the AMP-CMD community.
• Since the total OP budget is limited, please include in the justification whether your budget is amenable to a tiered approach for funding and output.
• Travel and equipment costs will not be covered and should not be included in the budget.
• Note that the Broad Institute will take indirect costs (58%) on the first $25,000 of the proposed budget. Therefore, please factor $14,500 in Broad IDC to your total budget request. If the budget is less than $25,000, no indirect costs will be taken.

How to apply for Opportunity Pool funding

The OP application consists of four parts, to be emailed to "amp-cmd-opportunity-pool(at)broadinstitute.org".

1. Scientific Proposal: 4 or fewer pages total, following the instructions on the OP scientific proposal template. Save the proposal in Word or PDF format.
2. Budget justification: created using the Budget Justification Template. Save the budget justification in Word or PDF format.
3. Detailed budget: created using the Budget Template. This is the same template as is used for NIH funding applications. If your institution has an internal template that matches the NIH budget form, you may use that.
4. A recorded video presentation of the project (10 minutes or fewer), due along with the rest of the application on September 1 so that it can be viewed BEFORE the proposal review meeting.
   • Create the video using a video conference application such as Zoom.
   • Maria Costanzo (mariacos(at)broadinstitute.org) can record your presentation if desired.
   • If you record it yourself, please deliver it either via an emailed file, along with the rest of the application, or include a link to Google Drive or a link to the video on YouTube in your application email. 

Applicants will be invited to discuss their proposals at a virtual meeting of the AMP CMD NIDDK Steering Committee.

Timeline for Opportunity Pool applications (year 3 funding)

Applications must be submitted by the close of business in your time zone on September 1, 2022. Awardees will be notified by November 10, 2022.

Once funding is decided, awardees will need to supply:

• Contact information for your grant administrator office
• Statement of work
• IRB protocol approval/IACUC (if applicable)
• A copy of your negotiated F&A rate agreement (required for U.S. institutions; international F&A rate is set by the NIH).

Expectations for Opportunity Pool awardees

OP awardees are expected to work with and share data with other AMP-CMD consortium members. Awardees external to AMP-CMD will become consortium members upon award, and must work within the governance of the consortium and adhere to subaward contractual requirements. Before completion of the award, all data, methods, tools, or visualizations developed with OP funding must be made accessible through the AMP-CMD Virtual Library and/or deposited in the Common Metabolic Diseases Knowledge Portal (CMDKP) or the Common Metabolic Diseases Epigenome Atlas (CMDGA) as appropriate. Investigators are expected to attend and present their work at consortium face-to-face or virtual meetings, and to submit progress reports every 6 months and upon completion of the award.

Management of Opportunity Pool awards

OP awards will be subcontracts of the UM1 award to the Broad Institute, and they will be executed in a timely manner within the constraints of annual funding periods. Funding will align with the UM1’s funding timeline (August 1 - July 31). The Broad Institute DCC project manager will work with investigators and grant staff at the awarded institutions and the Broad to coordinate execution of the subawards.

Awardees should aim to spend down funds during the year in which they are given, since all carryforward requests must be approved by the NIDDK and this may lead to significant delays in distributing the remaining funds.

Updated June 27, 2022