Funder: National Institutes of Health
Due Dates: January 8, 2027 (Earliest submission) | February 8, 2027 (Application deadline, 5:00 p.m. applicant local time)
Funding Amounts: Up to $700,000 in direct costs annually for five years maximum; $4 million total program funding
Summary: NIDA supports multimodal mapping and mechanistic investigation of neural cell ensembles encoding substance-use experiences and addiction-related states.
Key Information: Clinical trials and foreign subawards/subcontracts are not allowed; awardees must participate in the NExUS Collaboratory.
Description
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is renewing and expanding the Neural Ensembles and Used Substances (NExUS) Collaboratory through U01 cooperative agreements. The program seeks systematic, scalable methods to identify, map, and analyze cell populations responding to addictive substances. Projects will help build a multimodal knowledge base and test how neural activity patterns encode states such as intoxication, craving, and dependence.
Research may investigate any substance class or compare classes, including opioids, psychostimulants, cannabinoids, depressants, psychedelics, and alcohol. Projects must connect cell-resolved activity with other measurements from the same cells or populations and test mechanistic neural-coding hypotheses. Priorities include reusable datasets, integration with BRAIN Initiative cell taxonomies and atlases, and coordinated experimental, analytical, and informatics infrastructure.
