The final awards were made on Friday in the emergency, fast-track round. However, the agency noted that additional Covid awards are possible through its existing awards process and today issued a "special call" for applications in its Quest awards program. The deadline is Aug. 31.
The agency said in an email,
"For this special edition of DISC2, the overall timeline and award amount have been capped at 12 months and $250,000, respectively. The expected outcome, at the end of the award, is a candidate therapeutic, diagnostic, medical device, or tool that can immediately progress to translational stage activities."Last week's awards of $250,000 each went to Karen Christman at UC San Diego and Lili Yang at UCLA.
Christman hopes to develop a treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome, the agency said, a life-threatening lung injury that occurs when fluid leaks into the lungs and is prevalent in COVID-19 patients. Her research involves extracellular matrix hydrogels, a structure that provides support to surrounding cells.
Yang is seeking to use blood stem cells to create invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, a powerful type of immune cell with the potential to clear virus infection and mitigate harmful inflammation.
For more details, the agency's review summary for Christman's application (DISC2COVID19-12007 #2 ) can be found here. The summary of Yang's review (DISC2COVID19-12020) can be found here. Yang also sent a letter to the agency board as did Christman.
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