Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP) (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | RFA DK 18 015

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA DK 18 015

The Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP) funding opportunity (RFA-DK-18-015) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement (U01) designed to continue and expand the work of the existing HPAP effort. The program sits within the broader Human Islet Research Network (HIRN), launched in 2014 to accelerate translational research on why functional human beta cell mass is lost in type 1 diabetes (T1D) and to support new strategies to preserve, protect, or replace beta cells. As a cooperative agreement, this mechanism typically implies substantial NIH program involvement in coordinating goals, milestones, and resource-sharing expectations, rather than operating as a fully investigator-initiated grant. The FOA is explicitly marked “Clinical Trial Not Allowed,” meaning the supported work is not intended to run prospective interventional clinical trials, but instead to focus on tissue-based and data/resource activities.

The core purpose of the award is to support a single, highly integrated team with end-to-end expertise across human pancreas and islet biology, including: identification and acquisition of relevant human pancreatic tissues; tissue handling, processing, and preservation; deep, multimodal characterization of those tissues; and robust database construction, curation, and long-term data management. The expectation is that the funded group will function as a centralized resource hub that can reliably collect and analyze high-value human samples and then make the resulting datasets broadly usable by the research community.

The scientific tasks emphasized by the FOA fall into two big deliverables. First, the awardee is expected to identify, collect, and intensively characterize primary pancreatic tissues from people with T1D, individuals showing beta cell-specific autoimmunity (a key stage on the pathway to T1D), and people with rare forms of islet dysfunction that could shed light on mechanisms relevant to T1D pathogenesis. Importantly, the program also calls for age-matched control tissues, which are essential for interpreting disease-associated findings against appropriate baselines. Second, the awardee must analyze, organize, and share the resulting data, while expanding the existing PANC-DB open-access database resource. In practice, this means not only generating high-quality molecular, cellular, and histologic datasets, but also ensuring those data are standardized, well-annotated, searchable, and accessible to outside investigators.

From an infrastructure and community value standpoint, HPAP is essentially positioned as both a tissue analysis engine and an informatics resource. The emphasis on “multimodal analysis” signals that the program is meant to integrate multiple complementary methods (for example, combining tissue imaging with molecular profiling and clinical or donor metadata) so that the community can interrogate T1D-related changes in the pancreas at different biological levels. The database expansion requirement underscores that NIH is investing in durable, reusable assets rather than one-off findings: curated datasets, harmonized metadata, and open access distribution through PANC-DB so other researchers can replicate analyses, compare cohorts, and build new hypotheses.

Eligibility is broad and includes many common U.S. applicant types: state, county, and local governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; tribal organizations that are not federally recognized; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (outside of higher education); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses. The FOA also highlights additional eligible categories such as Hispanic-serving institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), as well as faith-based or community-based organizations and certain federal agencies. A key limitation is that non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply; however, foreign components are allowed as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement, meaning a U.S.-led application can include certain well-justified international elements under NIH rules.

Administrative details provided in the posting include the NIH as the funding agency, a discretionary funding category, and an activity focus in health (CFDA 93.847). The FOA was created on October 10, 2018, with an original closing date of February 26, 2019. The listing indicates an award ceiling of $30,000,000 and anticipates supporting one team (the narrative description states a single team will be supported). Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a major, centralized resource award intended to maintain and grow the nation’s capacity to obtain and deeply profile human pancreatic tissues relevant to T1D, and to deliver those results back to the field through an expanded, open-access PANC-DB platform.

• The National Institutes of Health in the food and nutrition, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Human Pancreas Analysis Program (HPAP) (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.847.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2018-10-10.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2019-02-26. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $30,000,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

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