Data Coordinating Center for the Aging and Alzheimers Disease Mouse Brain Atlas (AD-MBA) (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

The National Institutes of Health, through the National Institute on Aging, is offering the Data Coordinating Center for the Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Mouse Brain Atlas (AD-MBA) (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed), funding opportunity RFA-AG-27-010. The opportunity supports the broader NIA mission of advancing biomedical, social, and behavioral research related to aging and age-associated diseases. NIA established the Alzheimer's Disease Multimodal Atlas Projects, or AD-MAPs, to generate comprehensive multimodal atlases and brain-wide connectomes that can help researchers identify cell types and circuits altered during normal aging and Alzheimer's disease progression. This funding opportunity addresses the need to bring currently siloed mouse brain datasets together through a centralized data sharing, integration, and dissemination infrastructure. The award will support a Data Coordinating Center responsible for creating the Aging and AD Mouse Brain Atlas, or AD-MBA. The Center must aggregate and harmonize multimodal data from at least five AD-MAPs projects and must include, at minimum, single-cell or single-nucleus transcriptomics and connectomics. The work is expected to encompass multiple mouse models of aging and Alzheimer's disease, different disease pathologies, multiple brain regions, both sexes, and early through late stages of disease progression. The Center must also develop, optimize, or use computational tools for multiscale integration, facilitate collaborative analyses among contributing teams, and provide an accessible web-based community portal for visualization, query, discovery, and access. Raw, processed, and harmonized datasets must use the NIA-supported AD Knowledge Portal as the data repository. Applications must not propose direct acquisition of new primary data, integration of data from outside the AD-MAPs program, or integration of data that were not generated from mouse models. Applications that fail to aggregate and harmonize datasets from at least five AD-MAPs projects, fail to include the required transcriptomic and connectomic data types, fail to provide an accessible community portal, or fail to address computational integration across modalities will be considered nonresponsive and will not be reviewed. Application budgets are not limited but must reflect the actual needs of the proposed project. NIA intends to commit 2.5 million dollars in fiscal year 2027 to fund one award, and the maximum project period is five years. Cost sharing is not required. Pre-award costs are allowable only under applicable NIH Grants Policy Statement provisions. Eligible applicants include public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations with or without 501(c)(3) status, small businesses, other for-profit organizations, state governments, county governments, city or township governments, special district governments, federally recognized and other tribal governments, eligible federal agencies, U.S. territories or possessions, independent school districts, public or Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations, faith-based or community-based organizations, and regional organizations. Non-U.S. entities and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible applicants. Foreign components are allowed, but applications involving foreign subawards or subcontracts are noncompliant and will not be considered for funding. Any individual with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to conduct the proposed work may serve as a PD or PI through an eligible applicant organization. Applications must follow the Research instructions in the NIH How to Apply Application Guide together with the program-specific requirements in this NOFO. Submission is electronic through NIH ASSIST, an institutional system-to-system solution using Grants.gov, or Grants.gov Workspace, with application tracking through eRA Commons. Required registrations must be completed before submission. The Research Strategy must address five objectives covering data aggregation and harmonization, multiscale modeling tools, creation of the AD-MBA dissemination platform, use of existing resources and infrastructure, and an evaluation plan with measures of progress, timelines, milestones, and actionable criteria. Letters of support are required from the PIs of every project proposed for integration. Applicable Resource Sharing Plans and a Data Management and Sharing Plan must also be provided. Paper applications are not accepted. Scientific peer review will consider overall impact and the scored criteria of Significance, Investigators, Innovation, Approach, and Environment. NOFO-specific considerations include the usefulness of the proposed portal, feasibility of collaboration with contributing AD-MAPs projects, comprehensiveness of data ingestion and harmonization plans, rigor and reproducibility standards, feasibility of multiscale computational integration, dissemination of open-source methodologies, functionality of the web interface, data hosting and deposition processes, and the specificity and feasibility of evaluation milestones. Following initial peer review, recommended applications receive a second level of review by the National Advisory Council on Aging. Funding decisions consider scientific and technical merit, availability of funds, and relevance to program priorities. The opportunity was posted September 1, 2026, and the earliest submission date is October 10, 2026. New applications are due November 10, 2026, by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization, and no late applications will be accepted. Scientific merit review is anticipated in March 2027, National Advisory Council on Aging review in May 2027, and the earliest project start date is July 2027. The NOFO expires November 11, 2026. No required pre-application letter of intent, concept paper, or similar gating submission is identified. Applicants are strongly encouraged to consult the NIA Scientific Contact early in the pre-submission process regarding responsiveness. The scientific contact email is NIA-NOFO-Scientific@nih.gov, and applicants should include the NOFO number in the email subject line. No scientific contact telephone number is provided.

Coordinate with the NIA Scientific Contact early regarding responsiveness. Explicitly cover all five required Research Strategy objectives. Demonstrate feasible coordination with at least five AD-MAPs projects and obtain letters of support from their PIs. Include at minimum single-cell or single-nucleus transcriptomics and connectomics. Do not propose new primary data collection or datasets outside AD-MAPs. Use the AD Knowledge Portal as the repository. Define rigorous data quality standards, feasible harmonization and multiscale integration methods, an accessible web portal, and specific measurable evaluation milestones. Submit early enough to correct electronic submission errors before the deadline.