UPDATE: on May 18, the Department of Defense posted the 2022 funding opportunities through the Lupus Research Program.

News release via the Department of Defense - Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program

The FY22 Defense Appropriations Act provides funding for the Lupus Research Program (LRP) to support the full spectrum of research projects or ideas that specifically focus on scientific and clinical lupus issues, which, if successfully addressed, have the potential to make a major impact in lupus research. The managing agent for the anticipated funding opportunities is the CDMRP at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC).

The LRP is providing the information in this pre-announcement to allow investigators time to plan and develop ideas for submission to the anticipated FY22 funding opportunities. The FY22 LRP funding opportunity announcements for the following award mechanisms will be posted on the Grants.gov website. Pre-application and application deadlines will be available when the announcements are released.

Applications submitted to the FY22 LRP Idea and Impact Awards must address one or more of the following Focus Areas:

• Understanding how lupus disease heterogeneity impacts risk of disease, disease presentation, clinical course, and outcomes; using a diverse range of research disciplines including, but not limited to, biopsychosocial studies, personalized medicine, variation in treatment studies, health economics, socioeconomic studies, environmental studies, and epidemiological studies;
• Understanding the biological mechanisms of lupus disease including, but not limited to, studies of informative/rare patients;
• Determining the pathobiology of end organ injury related to lupus disease in target human tissues;
• Improving quality of life for individuals living with lupus including, but not limited to, addressing social determinants of health, access to healthcare resources, outcomes research, patient-reported outcomes, symptom and disease control, comparative effectiveness research, and issues and challenges that, when addressed, make day-to-day living with lupus easier and life more fulfilling;
• Understanding the underlying genetic and epigenetic components and gene-environment interactions of lupus and how they may relate to clinical disease characteristics, variations, disparities and differences in response to therapies using functional genomic studies;
• Innovative health care delivery models improving outcomes for lupus (Impact Award only).

Applications submitted to the FY22 LRP Transformative Vision Award must address one of the following Focus Areas:

• Innovative health care delivery models improving outcomes for lupus;
• Design and implement an intervention either at the individual and/or healthcare system level to improve the quality of life for individuals living with lupus. Example interventions include, but are not limited to, access to healthcare resources, outcomes research, symptom and disease control, comparative effectiveness research, and issues and challenges that, when addressed, make day-to-day living with lupus easier and life more fulfilling.

Click to enlarge table.

A pre-application is required and must be submitted through the electronic Biomedical Research Application Portal (eBRAP) at prior to the pre-application deadline. All applications must conform to the final funding opportunity announcements that will be available for downloading from the Grants.gov website. The application package containing the required forms for each award mechanism will also be found on Grants.gov. A listing of all CDMRP and other USAMRDC extramural funding opportunities can be obtained on the Grants.gov website by performing a basic search using CFDA Number 12.420.

Submission deadlines are not available until the funding opportunity announcements are released. For email notification when announcements are released, subscribe to program-specific news and updates under “Email Subscriptions” on the eBRAP homepage. For more information about the LRP or other CDMRP-administered programs, please visit the CDMRP website.

Click here to read the release on the CDMRP website.