The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to encourage grant applications that address the long term goal and objective of developing sustained release strategies for HIV treatment or prevention. Applications may propose treatment or prevention products delivered using sustained release platforms (oral, injection, implant or direct delivery to HIV target mucosa) that will provide a minimum of 1 week for oral (treatment) or a minimum of once a month for all other drug delivery systems for prevention and treatment protection/efficacy.

Research Objectives

The goal of developing safe, effective and well-tolerated acceptable sustained release formulations/regimens is thus to improve adherence by significantly simplifying dosing requirements while maintaining consistent and effective drug levels in plasma and HIV target tissues (CNS/CSF, semen, lymph nodes, female reproductive tract, GALT, etc.).

The charge for sustained release drug delivery systems development is to create strategies that deliver effective drug concentrations for longer periods of time, thereby simplifying drug taking behavior, increasing adherence, and providing more effective overall treatment and prevention.

A more detailed description is available in the full text of the announcement.

Specific Areas of Research Interest

Applicants are encouraged to consider specifying milestones and timelines for their proposed research. Applications may be focused on one or more of the topics highlighted here.

Application due dates: January 4, 2017; January 4, 2018; January 4, 2019, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization. Applicants are encouraged to apply early to allow adequate time to make any corrections to errors found in the application during the submission process by the due date.

Prior to preparing and submitting your application we suggest you contact the donor and confirm your country’s and organisation’s eligibility with reference to the Non-domestic (non-U.S.) Entities (Foreign Institutions) are eligible to apply eligibility point of the announcement.

It is critical that applicants follow the instructions in the SF424 (R&R) Application Guide.

There are several options to submit your application to the agency through Grants.gov:

• using ASSIST system to prepare, submit and track your application online;
• downloading an application package from Grants.gov, complete the forms offline, submit the completed forms to Grants.gov and track your application in eRA Commons;
• using other institutional system-to-system solutions to prepare and submit your application to Grants.gov and track your application in eRA Commons.

Applicants must obtain the SF424 (R&R) application package associated with this funding opportunity using the “Apply for Grant Electronically” button in this FOA or following the directions provided at Grants.gov.

We suggest you go through all the information provided in the full text of the announcement and contact the relevant person provided in Section VII. Agency Contacts if you need to make any clarifications. The RP-EECA team might also be able to help with understanding some of the requirements. But outstanding knowledge of English is crucial for the success of your application.