Research Project
10481184
SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: Due to the high mortality (>2% of infected individuals world-wide) with ~25% of infected individuals developing post-acute COVID-19 syndromes, the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) organized a taskforce composed of Diabetes Research Centers (DRCs) and Centers for Diabetes Translational Research (CDTRs) to explore research directions that should be harnessed to address the issues associated with COVID-19 and metabolism. Two related efforts were broadly agreed upon to be of important current and future value and were endorsed at the Spring NIDDK Council meeting. This application for a Supplement represents our formal request for NIDDK funds to support these two novel research programs that will take advantage of the established of the NIDDK funded DRC and CDTR infrastructures. Within this framework, there are two overarching goals. The immediate goal is to foster COVID-19 metabolism research which leverages the existing technologies and strengths that exist with the national DRC and CDTR programs. The long-term goal is to develop a work flow for expanding national research collaborations across the diabetes/obesity and metabolic disease research communities at the basic, clinical, translational, community and health disparity levels. To accomplish these objectives, we propose 1) To establish a national Pilot & Feasibility (P&F) award program to fund collaborative research projects directly related to COVID-19 and metabolism; 2) To establish a national mini-grant research award program to fund projects directly related to COVID-19 and metabolism that will specifically use DRC and/or CDTR Biomedical Core facilities; 3) To develop and oversee an effective process for the solicitation and review of grant applications; and 4) To establish the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as a central site for the collection, management and distribution of funds that will be used to support the national P&F and mini-grant programs.
