Mechanistic links between diet, lipid metabolism, and tumor growth and progression (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed) | PAR 23 051

Opportunity Information: Apply for PAR 23 051

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding opportunity PAR-23-051, titled "Mechanistic links between diet, lipid metabolism, and tumor growth and progression (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)," supports research aimed at explaining, in concrete molecular and biochemical terms, how diet influences cancer through lipid metabolism. The core goal is to move beyond broad associations between nutrition and cancer outcomes and instead pinpoint the specific lipid-driven mechanisms that tumors use to grow, survive, and progress. In practice, this means proposals should focus on fundamental, mechanistic studies that identify and define the pathways, enzymes, lipid species, transport processes, and signaling functions through which lipids connect dietary inputs to tumor biology. A major emphasis is on treating lipids as central mediators rather than side players, recognizing that fats and lipid-derived molecules can act as structural components of membranes, energy sources, signaling messengers, and modulators of the tumor microenvironment.

This program is also designed to bridge two areas that have often developed separately: nutrition research and molecular metabolism/cancer biology. NIH is signaling interest in projects that integrate expertise across these historically divided fields, because the biology of diet-cancer relationships often cannot be explained without deep knowledge of lipid biochemistry and metabolic regulation. The announcement highlights that this research area has unique technical and conceptual hurdles, largely due to the complexity and diversity of lipid species, their context-dependent roles, and the difficulty of accurately measuring and interpreting lipid changes in cells, tissues, and organisms. As a result, applications that include tool development, improved measurement approaches, or new experimental platforms to interrogate lipid metabolism in cancer-relevant settings may align well with the program’s intent, as long as they are clearly tied to mechanistic questions about tumor growth and progression.

The funding mechanism is a U01 cooperative agreement, meaning funded projects typically involve a more active partnership with NIH compared with standard research project grants. While the specific collaboration expectations can vary by program, a cooperative agreement generally implies that NIH may have substantial programmatic involvement, such as coordinating activities across awardees, setting shared milestones, or fostering data/resource sharing to build a stronger collective research effort in an emerging area. Importantly, the opportunity is explicitly "Clinical Trial Not Allowed," so applications should not propose clinical trials. The research can still be highly translational in the sense of generating actionable mechanistic insights, biomarkers, or therapeutic hypotheses, but it must remain within a scope that NIH does not classify as a clinical trial under its policies.

Eligibility is broad and includes many types of U.S.-based organizations: state, county, and local governments; special district governments; independent school districts; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; other Native American tribal organizations; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits with or without 501(c)(3) status (excluding higher education when relevant); for-profit organizations other than small businesses; and small businesses. The announcement also explicitly calls out additional eligible applicant categories such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, and Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs), along with faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, tribal governments that are not federally recognized, and U.S. territories or possessions. At the same time, it draws clear boundaries around foreign participation: non-U.S. entities and non-U.S. institutions are not eligible to apply as the primary applicant organization, and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply. However, foreign components, as NIH defines them in the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are allowed, which typically means an otherwise eligible U.S. applicant can include certain foreign collaborations or elements when scientifically justified and consistent with NIH policy.

From the provided source details, the opportunity falls under the NIH activity areas of education and health and is associated with multiple CFDA numbers (93.393, 93.394, 93.395, 93.396, 93.399), reflecting NIH’s broader cancer and health research funding structures. The listed award ceiling is $500,000, indicating the maximum allowable budget level per award under the program’s stated terms (applicants would still need to follow the FOA’s budgeting instructions and any institute-specific requirements). The original closing date shown is 2025-10-23, and the opportunity was created on 2022-11-21, which gives a sense of the application window and the program’s timeframe.

Overall, this FOA is aimed at building a stronger mechanistic foundation for understanding how dietary factors influence cancer by reshaping lipid metabolism, and how tumors in turn exploit lipid pathways to support malignancy. Competitive applications will likely be those that clearly articulate testable mechanistic hypotheses, use rigorous models and state-of-the-art lipid and metabolic approaches, and show credible cross-disciplinary integration between nutrition science and molecular cancer metabolism, while staying firmly outside the clinical trial category.

• The National Institutes of Health in the education, health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Mechanistic links between diet, lipid metabolism, and tumor growth and progression (U01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.393, 93.394, 93.395, 93.396, 93.399.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2022-11-21.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2025-10-23. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for PAR 23 051

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