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Research Office

Near-Miss Award

Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) – 2025

The WVUCI Near-Miss Awards support the collection of additional data to enhance the competitive resubmission of a cancer-related NIH grant application.

Purpose

  • Foster the collection of data needed to address weaknesses identified by reviewers of an NIH cancer-related R01-level grant proposal.
  • Enhance competitiveness of cancer-related research grants through strategic investment.

Eligibility

  • May be individual or multiple principal investigators (PI or MPIs).
  • At least one PI must be a WVUCI faculty member in good standing at the time of application.
  • All PIs and Co-Is must be full-time WVU faculty in good standing.
  • An investigator may only serve as PI on one funded WVUCI intramural award at a time.
  • The grant application must be cancer-research focused, have been reviewed by an NIH study section within the past 6 months, and have annual direct costs greater than $175,000.
  • Must have a priority score within 20 percentage points of the published payline for the assigned primary institute.

Letter of Intent

  • Letters of Intent are required. Letters will be reviewed, and select applicants will be invited to complete a full proposal.

Application and Submission Guidelines

Near-Miss Pilot Award General Features

  • Award duration: 9 months (no-cost extensions are not allowed).
  • Award amount: Up to $75,000; budget requests must be justified, and there is no minimum budget amount.
  • The Near-Miss Award is not intended to support the pursuit of training grants (e.g., F31, F32, T32, etc.).
  • Submission is rolling; there are no specific due dates, and a funding decision is made within 2 weeks of application submission.

Full Application Requirements

  • NIH Formatting: 11 Arial font, single-spaced, 0.5-inch margins.
  • Required components:
    • Full NIH application (downloaded from NIH eRA Commons).
    • NIH Summary Statement (downloaded from NIH eRA Commons).
    • For each listed weakness in the summary statement, an explanation must be provided on how it will be addressed in the revised application (no page limit).

Budget

  • Up to $75,000 in direct costs.

  • Requested funds must be directly related to a strategy to address weaknesses identified by NIH reviewers.

Expenditures Allowed

  • Research supplies.
  • Consultant costs.
  • Computers (if directly required for data collection and not otherwise available, with justification).
  • Shared resource fees at WVU or partner sites.
  • Animal per diems.
  • Travel related to data collection.
  • Equipment/software/technology costing less than $5000.
  • Equipment/software/technology costing more than $5001 (requires justification and explanation of existing availability on campus).
  • Publication costs up to $3,000 for associated proposed research.
  • Professional grant editing services up to $3,000.

Expenditures NOT Allowed

  • Faculty salary and related expenses.
  • Administrative or secretarial support.
  • Office supplies or computers.
  • Tuition.
  • Travel to conferences.
  • Subcontracts to other institutions (except for shared resources not available at WVU).
  • Pre- or post-award management costs.
  • Non-medical or personnel services to patients.
  • Other expenses not typically allowed by NIH.

Review Process

  • A WVUCI Study Section will review the application and provide a recommendation for funding.
  • The WVUCI Executive Committee will review Study Section recommendations during the standing monthly meeting and vote on a funding decision.
  • Key scoring criteria:
    • Scientific rigor of proposed research.
    • Effectiveness and completeness in addressing reviewer critiques.
    • Plan for NIH application resubmission.
    • Likelihood of NIH funding success.
  • Written feedback on the revision plan will be provided.

Award Information and Terms

  • The number of Near-Miss Awards made depends on:
    • Available funding for the given budget year.
    • The scientific and technical merit of the revision plan.
  • For projects requiring IRB/IACUC approval, funds will not be available until approval is issued.
  • Compliance approvals must be issued within 30 days of the Near-Miss Notice of Award (NOA), or the award may be rescinded.
  • Projects must be completed within 9 months of Near-Miss NOA, and associated NIH grant applications must be submitted within 12 months of NOA.
  • Awardees must cite support provided by the WVUCI Internal Research Award Program when publishing any data collected using these funds.
  • Awardees must provide a final report at the end of the funding period.

  • Awardees agree to provide information needed for tracking of programmatic successes for the Near-Miss Awards (e.g. associated manuscript and grant application submissions, associated grant application scores) beyond the project completion data. 

Contact Information

For any questions, please contact:

Ms. Annie Prestrud
WVUCI Grants Administrator
Email: ann.prestrud@hsc.wvu.edu