NCI SBIR Webinar for Innovative Concept Award and Small Business Transition Grant

now i'm ready hi everyone uh thank you for joining today it's 201 so it's time to get our webinar started uh i'm corey hallett i'm a program director in the sb ncis bir development center and i'm here today with my director michael weingarten and my colleague deepan orion and we're going to talk to you about some new funding opportunities from our program i want to share a couple housekeeping things before we get started so this webinar is being recorded we will share the slides with the with um anyone who's registered if you have any questions please put them in the q a box there's two things there's q a and there's chat but if you have questions please put them in the in the q a box and not in the chat box we will send out a post event survey it's very important to us that you um fill this out so that we know how to improve um and so that we know if these are helpful to you and our email is there at the bottom it's ncisbir mail.nih.gov please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments after the webinar with that i'm going to turn it over to michael weingarten the director of the nci sbir development center to give you a little bit of background about sbir and sppr thanks very much corey i really appreciate it um i also want to thank everyone for joining us today it's a great opportunity for us to share information about our program and specifically both corey and deepa are going to focus on two brand new funding opportunities that we've been working on for quite a while um that we're interested in hopefully engaging the community in uh so they're gonna really get into the details on that um i'm just gonna take a minute to just give you a broad overview of what what sbr is all about uh next slide please so um sbr is actually is a congressionally mandated program that was set up back in 1982 where a percentage of the nci budget we are required to set aside a certain percentage every year to support small businesses to really engage in technology development that supports the nci mission sbr they're actually two sister programs there's sbir which is specifically focused on funding small businesses to engage in uh research and development activities that support the nci mission um and the budget for that uh this year is uh right around 157 million dollars it's 3.2 percent of the nci extramural budget and then the sister program known as sttr which is a small business technology transfer program actually requires a collaboration between a small business and a university and the goal of sttr is actually to translate and transition that technology that was originally developed in a university setting to a small business so the amount of funding for sttrs is less this year it's about 22 million dollars based on the set-aside percentage but can actually be a great vehicle uh to utilize for again supporting the translation of technologies from universities to small business next slide please why should you compete for sbr funding well the way sbr setup is actually a very good deal for small businesses uh the intellectual property rights are retained by the small business the government doesn't take any sort of ip position whatever intellectual property that you create as a small business under this award um the other important aspect sbr is it's not a loan so there's there's no repayment that's required by you if you receive funding for us we either fund projects as grants or as contracts and the two funding opportunities that deepa and corey are both going to talk about today one one is actually a contract opportunity one is agreeing opportunity the other thing is we don't take any sort of equity position in your company so the funding is non-dilutive uh so another good good deal for the small business and then finally because all applications are reviewed by the nih peer review process that actually creates a great opportunity when you're trying to raise additional capital and additional funding from venture capital as an example because they very much respect the nih peer review process so it can really help to serve you in the long run to raise additional private funding next slide please in terms of what we fund under sbir it's a very broad-based portfolio we really fund technologies across the cancer space uh the major requirement is that the technology that you're developing it has to have commercial potential that's one of the major goals of the sbr program but if you look here this actually gives you a sense of how the portfolio is distributed across all technology areas therapeutics being the largest part of our portfolio at 43 uh that's followed by in vitro diagnostics at 16 uh and then devices are actually very important part of our portfolio too imaging uh devices are at 14 followed by devices for cancer therapy which includes radiotherapy and surgical tools and then finally we also fund research tools and digital health is also covered under our portfolio so all in all this past year we we had 475 active projects um that split about 86 between grants and about 14 uh incumbent contracts next slide please um i mentioned a minute ago that commercialization is one of the key goals of the sbir program we were very interested in analyzing the impact of the program so a couple years ago we hired a consultant to actually look at the impact of sbir and we identified a cohort of 690 grants phase two sbir grants that we had funded between 1998 and 2010 and um we we hired the consultant actually to go out and contact all of those different grantees to find out what had happened with the funding that we had provided and specifically we wanted to know that those companies have been successful in commercializing their technologies and what we found was that actually out of the 690 projects 247 of those projects resulted in the commercialized technology and 368 of those total projects either resulted in the commercialization of the technology or those companies had been able to achieve royalties from their technology or follow on funding so overall the success of the program has been quite strong those 247 projects that were commercialized were actually able to achieve over nine billion dollars in sales total um and then we worked with a an economist to look at not only the uh the sales impact but what was the overall economic impact and they used some economic modeling to actually show that the impact of the program overall was actually over 26 billion dollars total in total economic input impact nationwide um so nci we invested about 787 million dollars in those uh 690 projects and in turn uh the those projects generated over 26 billion dollars in total economic output which is about a 33 to one impact overall next slide please one of the things that's unique about our program across the nih as a whole is that we've actually set up a center for for managing sbir and our center is staffed with 21 people who spend 100 percent of their time just on working with companies like yourself and and applicants who are applying to the program who might have originated in at a university so these are just some of the services that we're able to offer because we've set up our center we obviously we provide funding but we know that small businesses need a lot more than just funding to be successful so we spend a lot of our time advising applicants on how to write stronger applications and then we we engage in outreach like uh webinars like this um and then after we provide the funding um we we do other things such as we provide uh a program called i-core which is an entrepreneurship training program that really teaches um our our startup companies how to build a business model around the technology that they're developing so i-core is a really important component to our program and if you get funded once you get to a phase one sbr sttr you then become eligible to participate in our icore program finally we develop a network of investors around the country that we've really been building over the last 10 years i have a network of about 100 different investors that we have relationships with and because of that network we can make introductions to some of the top around the country and we have an investor initiatives program that uh you also become eligible to participate in uh when you're part of our program next slide please this is our team these are the program directors on our team and they all specialize in different technology areas so if you have any questions coming out of today where you want to talk about a potential project idea where you'd like to consider applying and we hope that you do uh we encourage you to send us an email at it to ncisbir mail.nih.gov and we can set up a one-on-one meeting where you can talk to us about your project idea and on that note i will hand it back over to corey thank you michael so i'm going to talk briefly about our a new funding announcement that we've just released a small business transition grant i don't think michael covered this in his section but i just want to lay out the how funding is awarded at nci um because it'll be important when i talk about the structure of the small business transition grant so at nci a phase one which is really proof of concept early type activities uh is a one year award or up to one year award for four hundred thousand dollars and the phase two award is more um it's continued research and development um it's where the commercial plan really starts to come around uh the technology and commercialization plan is required in the application and this is two million dollars over two to three years we didn't have a follow-on award that's a phase 2b bridge award i'm not going to talk about the phase 2 b bridge award today only to say that this is a large dollar award that really requires uh third-party matching funds in order to be competitive uh in peer review so um i want to focus again on the phase one and phase two because the small business transition grant is a fast track award which is a combined phase one and phase two you have a phase one component of the application with clear i need to propose clear success criteria and if those successive criteria are met then it transitions to phase two so in all the small business transition grant can propose up to 2.4 million dollars

in research so as michael mentioned we fund through both contracts and grants and as deepa and i talk about the two new funding announcements today one will be one is a grant and one is a contract so the small business transition grant is is obviously uh utilizes the grant mechanism and the purpose of this award is really uh to try to have a mentored path as junior scientists move into small businesses or become entrepreneurs the small business transition grant is modeled after the well-established k-99 r00 path to independence award and this is an intermediary step between a post-doc or junior scientist on their way to becoming a tenured faculty and when we looked at the path to entrepreneurship or the path from academic training into a small business there is no intermediary step and so we developed a small business transition grant to try to help people who are who are headed in the small business direction a little bit of background on why we developed this we did a small evaluation last year and looked at application sbr and sdtr success by the type of principal investigator relative to their experience with nih funding and so what we noticed was that experienced nih investigators which are defined as investigators that have received r01 or equivalent funding they are more successful at receiving a competitive score in um peer review of sbir and stpr applications we had spoken around this time we were speaking with institutions that house nci designated cancer centers and learning more about how they encourage entrepreneurship and how they encourage technology development and small businesses and we found that a lot of these institutions are targeting postdocs to be the individual that moves with the technology into a small business and part of this is to preserve their tenured faculty's dedication and time to discovery research and to grants that go to the university as opposed to go to a small business and we also found that there's really a need for more scientists with business experience and so we started asking the question internally if there was a way that nci sbir program could support emerging entrepreneurs or scientists moving into a small business setting and in a sort of mentored facility like trained environment um so that they we would produce more scientists with with business experience and so we developed this concept of the small business transition grant and as i mentioned earlier this is a fast track but it's a unique fast track in that it is a the phase one portion of the fast track is an sttr and the phase two portion of the fast track is an sbir and if you'll remember uh when michael talked about the difference between these two programs one of the main differences is um how much they utilize uh universities in in in their work so the phase one sttr requires a collaboration with a university and in fact the university has to do up to 30 of the work and the employee can can be maintained their employment can stay or excuse me the principal investigator can can be employed at the university under sbir this program permits collaboration with the university and the pi but the pi must be employed at the small business and so how we see this working for the small business transition grant is that in phase under the phase one sttr there's a training component and a technical component the small business pi which is a postdoc or other junior scientist would likely be at the small at the university still preparing the technology to move out into the small business there's a mentoring plan required and two identified mentors need to be in the application this is a technical mentor that'll help identify how to achieve the right milestones from a technical perspective and also a business mentor to help the pi understand what are the right milestones for commercialization there's as i mentioned the pi would be predominant we envision i mean they could be at the small business because this is an sttr so they could be in either location but we envision the pi will will be likely at the university um in under the phase one sttr preparing the technology to move to a small business and one thing uh that is important here is that i-core nih is required um for transition to phase two in order to transition one of the key things that needs to happen is the principal investigator here so this is the junior postdoc or junior scientist must move their place of employment from the university to the small business in order to meet the eligibility criteria of the sbir program there needs to be a series of updates reported to the program officer so the r d milestones whether they've been achieved an update to the commercialization plan and then an updated ip agreement between the university and the small business showing that the university continues to support the development of the technology in the small business the award would then transition to a phase 2 sbir that it's not a non-transferable award so it would need to be the same pi as phase one the mentoring must continue um how the relationship there because that the pi may start to gain a little bit more independence so we're less prescriptive on on the frequency and and the contact type but we do want a mentoring relationship to continue under phase two and then most of the research at this point should be conducted at the small business site some small pivots are allowed um to the technical plan but we couldn't allow major scope changes this would all have to fit within the the small pivots or small scope changes that are allowed within an nih grant normally just a few of the specifics and the funding announcement you can go to our website sbir.cancer.gov and find a link to more information under the funding tab the the pi for this award must be no more than eight years from their terminal degree and we really are encouraging women and scientists for underrepresented backgrounds to apply we the mentoring is a key component of this application and it is special review criteria you can find more information in the rfa but the mentors are are expected to put in at least two hours a week with the pi to help to help them um make the leap from academic science to sort of milestone-driven development in the small business and then the technology development is critical um this is not only a training award so if the if the technology fails to meet its go no go criteria or its go criteria we're not guaranteeing a transition to phase two there are two institutes that are participating in the small business transition grant that is us at nci and then also the national human genome research institute and so uh the points of contact for this funding announcement are here they can also be found in the rfa with that i'm going to hand over the presenter duties to deepa narayanan so she can talk to you about our other newly launched funding announcement thank you corey for some reason okay my video is blinking uh but before i start what one of the things that i wanted to uh uh share is that the slides from this webinar will be shared with everybody um we do ask that you not post the slides on the web somewhere because these contents keep changing and so we don't want a trail of um uh information that is outdated on the web but all the slides will be shared um with that being said yeah so the concept award as michael mentioned is a contract mechanism so this is different from the grant mechanism that corey covered recently for the small business transition grant um the contracts are sort of our way of funding nci scientific priority areas and those that have uh interest to the commercial sector so that's usually why we do contracts i want to take a little time to explain the difference between fdir grants and fbir contracts both these vehicles are funding mechanism for us to fund r d so in both cases we are funding r d and in both cases the uh the ipe and the um uh it's non-diluted funding the idea rests with the company and the government is not taking any share of the work that's being done however the key differences between grants and contracts are in grants uh usually the the scope of work is define um been defined by the investigator so for example for the transition grant you can do any any sort of technology as long as it fits the mission of nci since we are funding this but for contracts there is a pretty narrow scope that we define that we want people to work in a specific area a review uh is usually done at the center for scientific review for grants and at within nci for contracts however for the transition brand uh the con review is being done at nci too because it's such a special funding opportunity another key difference is that and this is a very important is for grants you can speak with the program officer at any time and we are happy to talk to you about the specifics of your grant application for contracts all questions have to be funneled to a contract uh contracting officer or a contracting specialist they will ask ask the questions at william program we are response to the contracting officer and they share the response with you and this is because we want to make sure that everybody gets the same information and grants typically have multiple receipt days contracts typically have just one receipt date a year uh another uh important um criteria is the contract usually have a negotiation process that is once you're funded you go a little back and forth with the uh with the with the with us to uh to finalize your deliverables and what your statement of work should be that process doesn't really exist for brands and um the progress reports also for contracts are a lot more frequent than they are for grants so these are sort of the difference between contracts and brands so i i am actually like showing this slide um essentially because fbir is it emphasizes the difference between academic grants versus fbi grants so in my opinion while as academic grants are science based fbi brands are usually product focused so even if the science is exemplary if it doesn't result in a product it's not the best fit for an sbir program so um and and what is happening is that because fbi or sdtr grants are focused on product development and innovation is essentially defined not as what is potentially or theoretically possible as it is in an academic brand but more in terms of differentiation from current products on the market or standard of care sometimes the really really risky projects and the disruptive innovations sometimes don't often come into the program and if they come they sometimes don't fare well in peer review so this particular concept award that we are i'm going to talk about is an effort to capture those kind of technologies um a little history about how this came about so in um early uh 20 late 2018 and early 2019 um dr sharpless the director of nci put together a external working group consisting of folks from academia um industry uh the investment community small businesses pharma and this group evaluated our fbi our program and gave some suggestions for improvement so while they were largely happy with the way that we've been handling the program they had eight suggestions for improvement and out of all of those suggestions this particular suggestion of implementing an sbir concept award was the one that go got the most traction and excitement from most of the group and i believe that that the reason is that the working group felt the need for encouraging more innovation they thought that we as nci should focus and and particularly as nci sbir should focus on innovation and foster really early stage high risk high reward projects that private industry may not fund at this particular point so with that in mind they they encourage us to develop a particular funding solicitation around a very early stage technologies so this particular solicitation the concept award is to support small businesses developing highly innovative and transformative technologies that have the potential to create a new scientific paradigms or improve clinical approaches in the area of pediatric or rare cancers so those are the two areas that we're focusing on for the concept award again as i mentioned the point of contact for this particular solicitation is sherry wells so all questions must be addressed to her her contact information is provided here so this is a phase one solicitation only clinical trials are not allowed there's one receipt date and there is an option of submitting and white paper which you all are very highly encouraged to do if you are submitting a proposal and this white paper is essentially going to be a two to three page summary of the project uh we will review it internally uh we'll get a couple of subject matter experts to review it and give you feedback on whether it is responsive and the things that you that might be of concern so um this is three hundred thousand dollars total cost it's a one year award you have to be a small business to apply so all of the eligibility criteria for svir still stand for uh this particular um funding opportunity and we do encourage all offerers to apply and especially those that have never submitted an sdir before or those that are sort of new to the program you really want to get more innovative ideas from places that we're not getting them from so some of the key uh differences for this concept of war so why is this different from the other contracts that we do so again as i mentioned the idea is to support very high risk high reward technologies in pediatric and rare cancer and the goal is to really de-risk ideas at an early stage and de-risk very innovative ideas we realized that a lot of these technologies will fail and we are uh we are ready for that um high rate of failure for some of these technologies because uh because risking very innovative ideas often come with that uh you are allowed to submit a white paper to get program input we were never able to do that earlier for contract solicitation so that is a new feature it's a very short application uh just 15 pages versus 50 that is usually there or 50 to 75 that are usually there for grant applications or other contract proposals we are we really do not um expect or require preliminary data it won't be taken as a big part of the review consideration um again this is because we want to fund ideas that are already not devist enough so if you have a ton of preliminary data you've already risked it to some extent and that's not what we're looking for another unique feature about this and one of the main reasons we have been able to do this via contracts is that the review criteria has different weightage so um you can read the details in the solicitation but what we've managed to do is 50 of the review criteria is is for innovation so we uh sell um other uh aspects like uh like um investigator history or pedigree all of those kind of things are reviewed um are considered less critical in the review criteria than innovation so we're trying to really evaluate the idea and not the people behind the idea so that's um that's a new um aspect of this particular program we're also trying to give uh make the awards rapidly you will know whether you're getting the award or not within maybe about four months from the proposal due date and awards will be made within six months so that's our goal um we hope to be a successful in that so we're working very hard and we've put you know timelines in place internally as well to make these kind of um um turn around uh and uh just like in the transition grant every um company has to go through the nih i-corps program uh so to do and i'll talk a little bit about the icore program in the upcoming slides to tell you a little bit about why we won the i call program and once you have dearest this you can go to the grant mechanism and then submit a direct to phase 2 or a fast track or maybe even another phase one depending on where you are after you have completed this particular um phase one concept award so the um the links to the award is here uh solicitation is here please do take a look at it and read it carefully and then feel free to contact sherry with questions and and i'll i'll respond to those via sharing so uh a question that's often asked is what is um innovative um and um and what is not innovative so this is a little bit difficult question to ask basically because we're looking for technologies that we don't know about we really want very innovative technology so if we haven't heard about it or you know we don't know so those are the kind of technologies we're looking for um what is not innovative is a little bit more easier to answer so if there are therapeutic targeting known pathways with known agents then that's not what we're looking for if you already have a funded sdir project and you're looking to expand it either to multiple indications or um or some things or in that sort of vein then that's not something that we want again technologies that are in later stage of development are also some technologies that we don't really are um won't be responsive to this particular concept award you're all welcome to submit those via our traditional spir sttr omnibus and we'll be happy to talk to you about that as well but uh they won't be responsive for the concept award uh this is just a brief uh description about the timeline um like i said from the proposal due date which is july 28th to the award with is which is in jan we expect that to happen fairly quickly in fact within about uh four to five months you should be notified whether you're getting the award or not uh the white paper deadline is in march it's a rolling deadline so if you submit white papers early we will get back the response to you as as and when we get them so um so that's uh the timeline for this particular um concept award um again get in touch with us um for for the concept award of course it has to go through the office of acquisition but otherwise we are happy to talk to you about any other project that you have um you know and um so our website is there as well as our email addresses uh you know to reach out to us at any time if you have any questions um at the sbir development center one of the things that we've been able to do is to provide a large amount of technical uh and other sort of commercialization resources because uh because of the centralized nature of our sdir development center and um so there are multiple funding opportunities beyond this particular two programs that we mentioned and there's a link to a lot of these here so take a look at those but there are also a ton of non-funding resources including the application assistance program for those who have never applied before and a range of resources such as the i-core or investor initiatives we do webinars and workshops all the time we have mentoring programs in terms of ceo roundtable and a few other programs that we're going to start soon and we have a program called connecting awardees to regulatory experts where we try to get fda to answer some of your questions so all of these resources are available to our awardees uh i i will not go through every single resource but i will share these slides set with you but i do want to talk about two of the one of them actually which is the icor uh both the programs that we mentioned today that is the sdir concept award as well as the sbir transition grant the people have to go through the i-corps program and essentially this is for phase one awardees to define the value proposition early uh and and to sort of flesh out their their uh business model as it were for that particular product so we are looking to um so you have a team of three that usually goes through the i-corps program the and the team consists of the pi of that particular project usually um this uh the ceo or somebody uh uh uh the senior leadership at the company who who's able to make decisions that might change the project focus and so on and then we usually have an industry mentor and the industry mentor is usually who has a somebody with a large network and can connect you with a lot of people for you to go and ask questions the icor program is this is not intended to teach you how to pitch but it's intended for you to talk to different um stakeholders whether they are customers whether they are other people who are going to be key players in getting your technology commercialized maybe regulatory people or maybe vendors um and and so on and understand what how they interact with your particular technology this is an eight-week program and teams are required to conduct up to 100 interviews um right now the whole program is done virtually and the last cohort i think everybody managed about 100 and 310 also i think interviews and and it's very interesting to watch this process because by the time you've sort of reached interview number 30 you exhausted the people you know and the people who know the people you know and then you then that's when i sort of see the magic happening and then you sort of hear really fresh perspective from people who are strangers to your technology and that helps refine your business model and and people learn and and then you can make these interesting pivots to your technology the reason why we ask everybody to go through the i-corps program is because these technologies are going to be very new um and and at a very early stage so as we are sort of de-risking the technical feasibility of the concept uh or of your technology we also wanted sort of the risk the business feasibility and that's the main reason that we are asking people to go through the i-call program we uh do uh provide financial support for the ifr program um and uh uh to uh which is around fifty five thousand dollars a a little bit of it goes towards the training and uh and the contractor that manages the program and the instructors but but uh more than half of it can be used towards um time for or for travel earlier that was another thing that people used it for now i don't know so um so that's essentially the role of the ico program um and uh and and the reason why we're asking everybody go through the program we found the people who put in effort to the icorp program get a lot out of it but it is a time and resource intensive you know sort of time intensive program may not be response intensive but it's definitely time intensive program so but we want to make sure that everybody goes through it uh there are uh several other slides here that have um many of the other initiatives that i um you know michael or i alluded to but i'm not going to go through each of them in the interest of time because i want to answer a lot of questions that are popping up in the q a box and in the chat box so um thank you for listening and please send your question to the q a box and corey and i will answer them great thank you and thanks everyone um for all the interest and we're going to try to just dive right in um deepa there's a number of questions in the chat box about i-corps and so um and these questions kind of take a couple different directions but i think we can answer them all as one so one is does i-corps give you um an advantage in terms of reward receiving an award um the second one is if if participants or awardees of the small business transition grant or the concept award have already completed icor either at nsf or at nih will they be required to do it again as part of their grant the second one i don't know about you but i think i have to think about a little bit more for the small business transition grant for the concept of what they do because again we're looking for really innovative technologies if you've de-risked it sufficiently to go through the i-corps program then the innovation may be a little bit of a challenge so then maybe you're not as responsive for the uh for the innovations uh um so that's that's definitely uh we would require you to go through the i-corps program for that particular product so so that's going to be um uh important and uh would going through the icord program previously give you an advantage um you know it will give you an advantage in the sense that you are more savvy about your product and you can probably put together a better application i don't think there's a review criteria specifically that says oh this person has gone through icore program so we should score them better but um in general if you've gone through the i4 program we expect that you will be able to incorporate the learnings of the program into the application right so for icore for the small business transition grant i could envision a situation where maybe there was a a waiver that was granted but it would definitely be case by case because i think it would um it's it's not something obviously that we've encountered yet um and it would depend on the product the indication like it you know it would depend on the specifics of the icor learning uh related to the funded project um i'm gonna ask you this this next question and then while you're answering it look for some other ones so um there someone is asking if their company can be virtual uh for a phase one and then can they hire uh or or contract with students during a phase one uh sbir or stpr if they are faculty that's probably more for the concept award so do you want to tackle that but but [Music] so my response essentially is that um it can be virtual uh uh it cannot be completely virtual there has to be a space allocated for the company and you need to sort of justify that you can do the work that you're proposing to do in that company control space um and and it can take uh different um i mean we've seen people who allocate a portion of their lab this company control space so those there are variations in what can be done but um completely virtual is always a challenge in peer review completely virtual is actually not allowed in the legislation but we we have a very strict create a very strict definition of completely virtual i think um but you do need some company space and as deepa said you can usually sometimes you can rent space back from the university sometimes you can get space from an incubator but i think yeah if this question is related to the small business transition grant um there's also a couple questions about pi of the small business transition grant so the pi of the small business transition grant really should be it's intended for the postdoc or junior scientists that's moving out um of that of the university and into the small business setting and so it wouldn't really it doesn't really work i mean that the pi of the small business transition grant has to be no more than eight years out from their terminal degree it really is like a training grant um but it's not a training grant right it's it's um it's a it's still an sttr moving to an sbir so if um in in this scenario you know it's it wouldn't really work to have a virtual company and then contract uh the students we the the ideal candidate for this is someone who has worked on a project does either their postdoc work or sometimes you know when when people have aged out of postdoc they stay on as like a staff scientist or something but they're still like they're still in a mentored role so those candidates that have been working on a technology that is moving to a small business and they're moving with it um so that's our ideal candidate some of the specifics will probably get worked out a little bit more in peer review so we'll learn more as um as the the first set of applications come in and um as they get reviewed so that's why in the beginning deepa said you know some of the specifics might start changing and that's because we start to learn um you know what what people are capable of doing out there um so i i think this relates to the small business transition grant but is there a fast track phase one fbi and phase two sbir that's combined um not for the small business transition grant but there is just a fast track people can apply for a fast track under the sbir program so that would be an sbir phase one with an sbir phase two and if you're going to do that i suggest you reach out to a program director in order to know if your your technology is right for a fast track there's some specifics there deepa there's questions about one year so one year is a pretty long timeline for someone with a really hot and exciting brand new technology so this is a concept award so do people have to propose one year as our project timeline under the concept award so at the time of application they do need to submit a one-year proposal because that's what everybody's going to be reviewed on once the project is awarded and we are in constant touch with the company and we can see the rate of progress we can decide at that point of time on a case-by-case basis whether these people are accelerating fast enough for us to end the contract early so for a contract your payment is done on the submission of deliverables so you submit your deliverables and you will get paid so if you manage to submit all your deliverables fast enough then um then we will you know give you all of the money quick enough so so it will be on a case-by-case basis but at the time of proposals you do have to submit for a one-year proposal great um there are a couple questions about who owns the ip in a small business transition grant and um as i mentioned work we envision that this is a um this is a mechanism to help uh small businesses or you know pis and and junior scientists come out of the university into the small business setting we assume a very common so we don't get involved in saying who owns ip but under the sttr program there has to be an agreement between the university and the small business demonstrating that the small business has the rights to take the technology forward for commercialization so whether that i'm i'm going to assume that most of the ips in these applications will be owned by the university but we don't specifically state that it has to be owned by the university we just state that it has to be a cooperative agreement between the university and small business and um that they're um and that the small business can take the technology forward oh and that the university does you know that there is work being done at the university and work being done as a small business um how is overlap with r21s handled for the concept award people in cases where you know those are sort of emerging ideas also uh very early smaller dollar awards so um if it's an academic uh that has um a small business and and and then also has our 21 funding or even if a small business has r21 funding how's that overlap handled again um uh i i i you can't of course do the exact same work with the r21 and the fbi so if if the if the technology is is de-risked um a little bit in terms of the basic mechanisms using r21 and then your deal you have more of a product development de-risking that should be allowed um and and that's fine but again without knowing the specifics it's a little difficult to say how we're going to manage it all right a couple other questions about pi for the small business transition grant questions about whether the pi can be a phd student who is who is about to graduate um or how uh underrepresented status is if there's like an early stage investigator type program so right now we are encouraging women and underrepresented scientists to apply um to the small business transition grant there's not a special review or a bump in review but uh we we are encouraging um individuals who who are underrepresented to apply to this program um and then a graduate student graduating um i shouldn't have picked this question i think we handled this in rfa we talked about this a little bit our main concern there is um that we don't want it can be really difficult if you're because of the technology mentor if the if the lab head of the academic lab is involved in the small business we we are concerned about getting into small business and equity um you know discussions with someone who then is going to sign off on a dissertation so i don't think we limit it but i definitely encourage people who are um going to be graduating to reach out to me and let's talk about the your scenario before you apply to the small business transition grant um deepa for the concept award if there's a previously approved molecule but it looks like it's being repurposed um maybe with a different route of delivery or a new indication would that work for the concept award generally no again you know if you want to send us a couple of um pages on that then we can take a look at it and respond but generally we are looking for something that is not already approved great and then um how about university faculty as pir co-pi on a concept award because that has it's a contract so it's sbir right it's not sdtr it is sbir we don't we can't really do contracts as sttr so it is an sbir youth but a university um employee can can be a kopi um yup so there was i've missed it there was a question about applicant assistance program and can someone apply for a small business transition grant and then also apply for the applicant assistance program and and you would have to apply for the applicant assistance program first i believe i don't remember when the next deadline is um you you technically could i think the the tricky thing is that if you have a small business transition grant that's under review and then you apply for the applicant assistance program we don't know if that'll be funded because we don't know the outcome of review so it's highly unlikely that you'd be selected for the aap furthermore if you apply to aap and then you end up submitting an sbir or stti application and is under review you cannot then have a small business transition grant under review at the same time covering the same activities so again i mean that might be a really good situation to reach out to us ahead of time and talk through the specifics uh we have a few more minutes here let's see how we can um how much we can get done uh oh this is a good one so deepa how do they submit the white paper how do you submit the white paper you send an email to the uh to ncioasbir the email address to shellywells and then will having preliminary data in the concept award application put put them at a disadvantage well if you have tons of preliminary data then probably we will say yeah it's de-risked enough so um again the idea is that we're looking for technologies that are not that de-risk so having preliminary data doesn't put you at a disadvantage but um but again it it's the stage that is very important uh which uh which stage you are um you you know you can't have something with absolutely no data in the sense that you have to have some sort of scientific rationale why your concept is you know even worth considering so there has to be some sort of a scientific rationale um sounds great um there are a few questions about the small business transition grant and and the funding cycle and the maturity of the company so um i just and then um relationship to the university so the whole intent here is really a training grant to help people move out of the university and into the small business um if there is a small business that is already established and has an accomplished pi that would be competitive for uh for uh either an sttr fast track or an sbir fast track grant under the normal mechanism we encourage you to go that direction this is to really help provide technology development support and do it in a thoughtful mentored way at the same time so if you have questions um you know feel feel free to reach out to me and um and then let's see if they submit a white paper will be they be told that the proposal is responsive or non-responsive to the concept award is that the purpose of the white paper generally yes we would tell you whether to go ahead or not okay and is there any specific format for that white paper no i think the what the white paper should have the components are listed in the solicitation the exact formatting is left up to you okay um so there are a couple more questions about small business transition grant and pi can the pi be the ceo of a company yes i mean if it's a junior scientist that they themselves are moving to become the ceo of a company they're they're moving to become an entrepreneur they could certainly apply for the small business transition grant additionally if it's a if it is a um a postdoc or junior scientist that's moving with a technology into a small business they they could apply but they need to be eight or fewer years out from their terminal degree if if it's an established uh or experienced scientist that is either has experience in industry or an academic setting um and is applying for the small business transition grant but using pis that's probably not the appropriate mechanism then the standard fbrs ttr not the transition grant is is a better way to go there again if you have questions feel free to reach out reach out to me there is another question is nci uh interested in receiving applications from entrepreneurs that do not have a history in of research in cancer and um is innovation the focus or is it the prior history of the pi i assume this part of the concept award for the concept of what innovation is the focus we are really looking for people who um you know who are new to the program so those kind of individuals are highly encouraged yeah often times when i've seen that in peer review peer reviewers like to see maybe someone affiliated with a company that has some knowledge of cancer right either the consultant or a collaborator or something uh what's been your experience fifa so yeah you have to have a um some uh some sort of provides some degree of confidence to peer review and the program that somebody will be able to do the work and and that uh that they have the advisors around to to help them but in the concept award essentially the idea is to not pay as much attention to the the previous funding history of the applicant but to focus more on the idea so for those who have not um received fbi or sttr awards or from those from universities that do not traditionally apply to sbi or a ctr awards so those kind of individuals are highly encouraged to apply um there's one in just the last one minute here there's one clarification and the person said rather than one year as a timeline for the project they met one year from application to receipt of funding is a really long time if they have a brand new innovative idea um what what do you say about that from application to receipt of funding in six months not one year for the concept to work for the concept of what you'll be notified in four months or maybe you know a max five whether you're getting the award and you would get the award within six months um typically um for seir is usually nine to 12 months so the fact that we can shorten it to six months is actually a big deal for us it may not seem that way but within the constraints of the federal government and its process this is a this is a pretty um innovative idea to give these quick funding for at least the nih so uh we are trying as much as possible to shorten it even more but uh this is where we are right now yeah similarly with the small business transition granted it's an innovative idea to match mentoring and uh small business awards so um but we're working through the specifics on that um it is three o'clock eastern time now so we are um we are just ending there a quick quick answer to a question what's the deadline for the small business transition grant it is march 10th

2021-05-09 23:58

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