The Marcus Program in Precision Medicine Innovation (MPPMI) seeks to fuel innovation in precision medicine by fostering creative, high risk, high impact team science projects supporting the precision medicine continuum. The MPPMI invites proposals for our 2022 funding in four award categories, Seeding Bold Ideas, Transformative Integrated Research, ELSI in Precision Medicine, and IDEA in Precision Medicine Research.
Award Amounts:
Marcus Program Seeding Bold Ideas Award (MP-SBI)
- Up to $75,000 for one year
- SBI awards enable initial exploration of untested concepts or hypotheses with great potential impact
- Funding 4-6 proposals
- Up to $300,000 for one year
- TIR awards support new directions for established basic science-driven translational studies
- Funding 3-4 proposals
- Up to $150,000 for one year
- 50% of the total grant budget ($75,000) may be applied to PI salary.
- ELSI awards support the development of necessary frameworks for ELSI, implementation, economic, and policy aspects of precision medicine.
- Funding up to 2 proposals
- Up to $150,000 for one year
- 50% of the total grant budget ($75,000) may be applied to PI salary.
- IDEA awards support the development of best practice frameworks for precision medicine research relative to inclusion, diversity, equity, and anti-racism involving historically-excluded populations.
- Funding up to 2 proposals
Eligibility:
- UCSF faculty, as well as UCSF Sandler Fellows and Physician Scientist Scholars Program awardees are eligible; and
- At least one of the multi-PIs on the team must have an Academic Senate appointment.
- Subcontracts: For the Transformative Integrated Research award – a subcontract cannot budget more than $75,000 of the $300,000 budget; For the Seeding Bold Initiatives award, only $15,000 can be used for non-UCSF budget lines; for ELSI in Precision Medicine and IDEA in Precision Medicine Research awards, only $30,000 can be subcontracted.
- PI salary: For the Marcus ELSI and IDEA grants only: up to 50% of the total grant budget ($75,000) may be applied to PI salary.
- F&A / Indirect costs are not allowed in the budget.
- Emeritus appointments are not eligible to serve as PIs.
- Research Series Appointments are not eligible for a PI role on a Marcus award. Research Series Appointments are academic not faculty appointments.
Proposal Scope:
For proposals to the Seeding Bold Ideas and Transformative Integrated Research mechanisms, projects:
- should support translational precision medicine research grounded in a basic science problem or question, but extending to patient relevance;
- require two or more PIs (multi-PIs): at least one a basic scientist, and at least one a clinical, social/behavioral, implementation, computational or population scientist; both existing and newly formed teams are eligible;
- should employ bold, high-risk thinking and approaches that will likely yield explicit “deliverables” (including discovery that the idea was wrong) after one year; and
- are encouraged to employ population health and health equity strategies or to integrate novel computational methods such as those that contribute to building the Information Commons or Knowledge Network.
For proposals to the ELSI in Precision Medicine mechanism:
The emergence of tranformational clinical and research technologies (e.g., gene-editing) and novel applications of personal and social determinants of health data (e.g., collectively, in the ‘knowledge network’), bring challenging ethical, legal, social implication (ELSI), implementation, and policy matters to precision medicine. Proposals to the ELSI in Precision Medicine mechanism:
- should address an innovative ELSI, implementation or policy project, tethered deliberately to a precision medicine application (e.g., data stewardship and sharing, economics of precision medicine applications, precision medicine and health disparities, equity in technology development, application or access, role of genetic exceptionalism in policy development, participant rights and engagement, etc.);
- require two or more PIs (multi-PIs);
- should employ bold, high-risk thinking and approaches that will likely yield explicit “deliverables” (including discovery that the idea was wrong) after one year.
For proposals to the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Anti-Racism (IDEA) in Precision Medicine mechanism:
Recognizing the essential societal reawakening to the impacts of racism, social injustice and health inequities, the research enterprise has begun to examine how these horrific realities have manifested in the conduct and output of research. Proposals to this new MPPMI mechanism, IDEA in Precision Medicine:
- Should be embedded within translational precision medicine research grounded in a basic science problem or question, but extending to patient relevance;
- should advance our understanding of how current and/or prior research methods and tools perpetuate
health inequities, inaccurate race-associated conclusions, racist clinical practice, etc.; and/or
- should focus on developing best practices and innovative, new experimental methods and tools to optimize IDEA in retrospective or prospective studies.
- require two or more PIs (multi-PIs), preferably multi-disciplinary;
- Areas of project focus could include: new knowledge on the role of race, ethnicity, disability, ancestry and gender identity in population health and precision medicine, assessment of current and development of improved racial or ancestral categorization strategies, methods to address lack of diversity and inequities in existing databases, critical review of ongoing use and development of improved IDEA in medical calculators, algorithms, protocols, standards and decision-making tools currently in use;
- should employ high-risk thinking and approaches that seek explicit “deliverables” (including discovery that the idea was wrong) after one year.
Human Subjects Research
To address the need for timely and efficient stakeholder input in research, the UCSF CTSI has established a Patient and Community Advisory Board (PCAB). The PCAB provides review and feedback for UCSF clinical and translational research. Community stakeholders include patients, clinicians, community-based organizations, civic agencies, and other groups who have a stake in the outcomes of clinical research. Involving representatives from these groups early in the research process is important not just for socially responsive science, but also makes for more successful translational research by facilitating recruitment and retention of diverse study participants, enhancing the feasibility of study interventions, and promoting successful dissemination of findings to target audiences. All investigators conducting human subjects research funded by a Marcus Award MUST seek PCAB review; Requesters should use this link and then click on the orange box. Such relevant projects will receive a credit of an additional $1,000 to cover the cost of PCAB review.
Marcus Diversity Supplement
This supplemental funding modestly augments top awarded Marcus grant projects that have at least one investigator from an under-represented group (URI) or that include historically under-represented (UR) populations in their research studies. The top two awarded SBI, TIR, ELSI and IDEA applications (based on final review score) that meet either criteria will be awarded an additional $2,000 for SBI grants, $5,000 for ELSI or IDEA grants, or $7,500 for TIR grants. Applications that meet either of these criteria will be asked to include a brief paragraph describing how the PIs plan to use such a supplement. Note that Marcus Diversity Supplements awarded to a URI faculty PI may be spent at the discretion of the URI researcher toward the aims of the proposal, and those awarded to a project that includes UR populations can be used broadly in support of the inclusion of those populations in their study. For example, these supplemental funds might support assays on additional samples, or translation of study documents into alternative languages.
Note that for the purposes of this supplement, the definition of “under-represented” follows the UCSF Office of Diversity and Outreach definition - African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American and Asian sub- categories of Filipino, Hmong and Vietnamese.