Program Design: Applicants must be based at a Massachusetts not-for-profit research institution working as Principal Investigators on projects with translational potential and preliminary supporting data, but still require a key set of proof-of-concept experiments prior to attracting a commercial partner or spinning out into a new company.
- Up to $3 million is available for the awards program
- Each award is anticipated to be up to $300,000
- Projects are anticipated to last about two years
- There are no limits on the number of proposals that may be submitted by each non-profit institution, however, each individual Principal Investigator is asked to only submit one application
Program Eligibility
Eligible applicants must meet the following criteria:
- Full or part time employee at a not-for-profit Massachusetts-based research institution
- Researchers must be proposing as Principal Investigators a project that is focused on increasing our understanding of sex and gender differences in biology or developing solutions for diseases or conditions that affect women solely, disproportionately, or differently.
- The project must have a human health focus with core technology and/or service in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, medical diagnostics or imaging, bioinformatics, digital health, genomics, nanotechnology, drug delivery, proteomics, regenerative medicine, etc.
- Funding must be used to support an experiment or experiments that increase(s) the translational opportunity for the technology with a defined goal such as filing patents, securing a sponsored research agreement, attracting other industry support, etc.
- The Applicant and Grantee institution must be in compliance with all other Center agreements, if any.
Review Process
Review Criteria: Applications will be reviewed by an external panel of scientists from academia and industry with expertise in women’s health and translating early-stage innovations. Applications will be reviewed based on the following categories:
- Qualifications of the team
- Use of funds
- Value to our understanding of women’s health and the Massachusetts ecosystem
- Proposed plan and approach to solving a key question in Women’s Health
- Unmet need being addressed
- Translational opportunities especially towards bettering the treatment of women’s health conditions
Funding
- Allowable costs for MLSC funds: equipment, research supplies and reagents (no minimum dollar amount), purchase of hardware and software, data generated via core facilities, salaries, consultants, and overhead/indirect expenses.
- Together salaries, consultants, and overhead/indirect expenses cannot exceed $100,000 and overhead/indirect expenses cannot exceed 15% of the total award ($39,130 for an award of $300,000).
- Non-fundable expenses include: paying for operating costs such as utilities and activities funded by other funding sources.
- Following execution of the grant agreement, funds will be provided on a reimbursement basis to the Awardees based on the terms of the Grant Agreement.
- The MLSC reserves the right to adjust the requested amount of funding for each proposal.