Limited Competition:Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing Program Data Coordinating Center (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

Description

The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to maintain the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for the Caenorhabditis Intervention Testing Program (CITP,) to coordinate data collection and analysis among the laboratories participating in the CITP, and to provide public access to standard operating procedures and experimental outcomes (including an accessible, annotated, and user-friendly database). The purpose of the CITP is to test, under standardized conditions at a consortium of three sites, potential intervention strategies that may moderate/alleviate health declines associated with aging across genetically diverse species and strains of Caenorhabditis. The CITP will continue to use lifespan and indicators of locomotory health as criteria for efficacious impact by targeting mechanisms likely to be conserved across phyla, but will combine compound sets derived from multiple sources, including those proposed by the biology of aging research community. The goals of next phase of the CITP are to: 1) increase the capacity to screen compounds with a high standard of rigor and reproducibility; 2) evaluate and, if warranted, implement new technologies, protocols, and genetic models of Caenorhabditis to enhance the throughput and depth of the CITP; 3) measure transcriptomic profiles to provide additional information on compounds that are effective in multiple species and/or strains, or on compounds that are effective in only a subset of species or strains; 4) develop reporters of various aging hallmarks in genetically diverse Caenorhabditis strains; and 5) use identified reporters to develop phenotypic screens against hallmarks of aging as a novel paradigm for anti-aging compounds that can have multiple uses in basic research as well as generate unique platforms for translational research.

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