NIH Grant Program Targets High-Risk Research

NIH is now accepting applications for a new grant program designed to fund innovative, original, or unconventional research. The transformative research project grant program (T-R01) will fund risky, investigator-initiated research for a five-year period and will use new evaluation procedures different from those used in traditional peer review. "The T-R01 Program will pilot novel approaches to peer review to facilitate identification and support of the most ground-breaking, high-impact research," NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said in announcing the program. NIH will invest more than $250 million over the next five years in this cross-NIH program.