The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation provides both industry funding opportunities and academic funding opportunities to conduct research to better understand cystic fibrosis and to develop potential treatments. Funding opportunities also can be found on awards.cff.org.
Subject matter experts review applications and assign priority scores based on various scoring criteria depending on the application type. For certain clinical research programs, people with CF and their families also review the applications and provide feedback.
Academic Funding Opportunities
The Foundation has standing requests for applications (RFAs) that accept proposals on a broad range of CF-relevant topics, as well as special topic RFAs that get released throughout the year. A list of key research priorities can provide guidance on what research topics are of interest to the CF Foundation and the CF community.
Investigators can contact our Grants and Contracts Management and Administration (GCMA) department at grants@cff.org to find out more about specific programs and which funding mechanism is most appropriate for their specific project.
The application review process includes multiple steps and can take anywhere from four to eight months from application submission to notification depending on the RFA. Some RFAs may require an approved letter of intent (LOI) prior to submitting a full application.
The Review Process
The CF Foundation uses a rigorous review process called peer-review to select grants for funding. Peer-review is a grant review process used by many research funding organizations, including the National Institutes of Health. At the Foundation, the peer-review process may be conducted by one of several review committees or by an ad hoc committee set up for a specific RFA. These committees may be composed of researchers, clinicians, biostatisticians, and/or community representatives depending on the type of applications that are being reviewed. Each committee includes reviewers with expertise in areas related to CF care and treatment and/or subject matter related to the specific applications being reviewed.
Below are the standing review committees:
- The Research and Research Training (RRT) Committee and Path to a Cure (PTAC) Committee review basic and translational science applications.
- The Clinical Research Committee (CRC) reviews clinical research proposals.
- The Physician-Scientist Training Programs (PTP) Committee reviews 3rd-5th year clinical fellowship and physician-scientist career development proposals that include a research proposal.
- The Professional Education Committee (PEC) reviews 1st and 2nd year fellowship training applications.
For special topic or targeted RFAs, ad hoc review committees may be formed to ensure a sufficient and thorough evaluation by the appropriate subject matter experts.
Once an application has been submitted, it will generally be assigned to a committee for review. The role of our review committees is to evaluate the proposal on its scientific merit, relevance to the Foundation's mission, and other criteria relevant to the specific RFA. Career Development and Training Awards include additional evaluation criteria for the reviewers to consider, such as the individual candidate, training plan and environment, and mentorship. All external review participants are required to agree to a confidentiality agreement and/or sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to gaining access to any application or proposal.
In some cases, a review committee may also participate in a review meeting where applications are discussed among the larger review committee. During these meetings, the reviewers assigned to the application will provide their scores for the application, provide a brief summary of the proposal, and discuss any relative merits and weaknesses noted. After the assigned reviewers have all presented, the application is opened up to the entire review committee for discussion. At the end of discussion, all reviewers will provide their scores for the application.
Funding Decisions
The Foundation makes funding decisions based on the recommendations of the review committee, our current research portfolio, and the application's relevance to the CF mission. Once funding decisions are made, the Foundation GCMA department will notify applicants of their status and will provide anonymized reviewer critiques.
Funding Opportunities for Industry Partners
Pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology organizations interested in funding opportunities can learn more about our process and request an investment at Industry Funding Opportunities.
Regarding non-funding support, the Foundation can provide patient samples, such as sputum, and bronchial epithelial cells (either wild type or with specific mutations in the CFTR) to industry or biotech companies for use in their development plan. For more information, please see Tools and Resources for Researchers. The Foundation also can help these organizations access other disease models for testing, make introductions to leaders in the CF research community for guidance or recommendations for their product development, and facilitate CF community feedback to inform the design of clinical trials.