Pilot and Feasibility Program

Project Summary/Abstract: Pilot and Feasibility Program The UCSF DRC’s Pilot & Feasibility (P&F) Program aims to contribute to the building of a robust diabetes research community at UCSF by fulfilling the following goals: · Identify, attract, and support new investigators and junior faculty establishing research programs in diabetes. · Foster new and innovative collaborations amongst DRC/UCSF faculty. · Enable established faculty to transfer skills and research developments to the area of diabetes research. · Encourage highly innovative early-stage investigation in basic and clinical diabetes research. · Provide seed funding that can be leveraged to increase external grant funding in emerging areas of research. During the last funding cycle, the DRC P&F Program supported diabetes research at UCSF with a total of $950,000 in funding for 19 projects out of 39 applications over five Requests For Applications. An additional proposal ($50,000) was funded with UCSF Diabetes Center funds. The DRC Program placed a high priority on providing support for young faculty intending to establish research programs relevant to diabetes, and 10 of the successful applicants were New/Early Stage Investigators (within 5 years of initial appointments). The Principal Investigators on 5 of the funded projects were new to diabetes research. Additional awards went to established investigators in diabetes who proposed new and exceptionally innovative collaborative projects. The P&F Program was dedicated to facilitating all UCSF Faculty wishing to pursue new initiatives in basic or clinical diabetes research. The successful research programs were conducted in 12 different departments or Organized Research Units and across 3 campuses at UCSF. Projects that were initiated with seed funding in the last grant period have resulted in 12 publications and successfully competed for $13,507,000 in external grant funding, of which $7,352,000 went to early-stage investigators. This outstanding return reflects the extremely high quality of the applications received. In addition, this success in expanding and enriching the diabetes research community at USCF led to a 2 million dollar private donation to the UCSF Diabetes Center to expand the P&F program. Our goal is to build on this success by expansion of the P&F to six grants per year, to expand to UC Berkeley and UC Davis, to increase applications by outreach and invitations to our annual DRC retreat, and to improve outcomes by improved mentoring and institutional support of P&F continuation awards.