The National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), both part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced in January 2019 grants of up to $ 500,000 in fiscal year 2020 and an estimated total of $3.3 million over 3 years, to fund new Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Centers. The purpose of these centers was described with a direct goal of identifying ways to enhance resilience.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/not ... 9-006.htmlDeclines in resiliencies with advancing age can lead to adverse health outcomes. Thus, strategies for preserving or enhancing resiliencies in older adults are needed. NIA invites applications that propose to study botanical products with strong supporting evidence for modulating resiliencies to physical or psychosocial stressors in older adults. Research projects investigating differences in molecular-, cellular-, and/or organism-level responses of older adults’ resilience to complex botanical interventions would be considered appropriate...
Obtaining data on genetic or epigenetic sources of diversity in human responses to the intervention, and their underlying causal, molecular mechanisms. The contributions of age, sex, diet, and/or differences in gut microbiota to such differences are of particular interest.
Here is more information on the priorities:
Botanical Dietary Supplements Research Centers (BDSRC)...will support transdisciplinary collaborations focused on producing the most critical data to inform the optimal design of future clinical trials of orally consumed, complex botanical dietary supplements for which there are rigorous but not definitive preliminary data...
Research objectives supported by this FOA may include, but are not limited to:
- Obtaining additional data on the causal, molecular mechanism through which the bioactive component(s) of the product act(s) on the proximate in vivo target(s). Model systems used, whether in silico, in vitro or in vivo, must be well-validated and well-justified as appropriate for the research question posed.
Obtaining data on genetic or epigenetic sources of diversity in human responses to the intervention, and their underlying causal, molecular mechanisms. The contributions of age, sex, diet, and/or differences in gut microbiota to such differences are of particular interest.
Further elucidation of the mechanisms through which the proximate biological activity(ies) of the product are effected, or through which they generate the hypothesized health outcome.
Generation of data on dose-response, optimal product composition, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) and optimal dose regimen, and/or optimization of circadian timing of intervention.
Generation of data on the time course of a health effect.
And this definition of resilience will strike a responsive chord with many, I suspect:
[Emphasis added]Resilience
For the purposes of the BDSRC FOA, resilience is defined as capacity to withstand and successfully adapt to change, disturbance, stress, etc., or to recover efficiently from disturbance, challenge, illness, etc. Applicants must use models in which resilience can be measured quantitatively and objectively over relatively short time frames appropriate for a 5-year award. Examples of such outcomes include, but are not limited to, restoration, in initially healthy individuals, of baseline microbiome ecology after disturbance, HbA1c levels, response to vaccine or viral challenge, time to return to initial or normal/healthy levels of inflammatory cytokines or blood glucose after a perturbation, or measures of fatigability.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa ... 9-001.html
