Funder: National Institutes of Health
Due Dates: August 12, 2025 | March 10, 2026 | August 5, 2026 | March 10, 2027 | August 11, 2027
Funding Amounts: Up to $150,000 direct costs per year, max $275,000 over 2 years (R21 mechanism)
Summary: Supports high-risk, high-impact, and innovative basic research to advance understanding, prevention, or treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs).
Key Information: Updated March 31, 2025: Carefully review the full announcement for recent changes and requirements.
Description
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Cutting-Edge Basic Research Award (CEBRA) is designed to foster highly innovative or conceptually creative research related to the etiology, pathophysiology, prevention, or treatment of substance use disorders (SUDs). This program supports high-risk, potentially transformative research that is underrepresented or not currently included in NIDA’s portfolio, with the goal of accelerating advances in addiction science.
Projects should either:
- Develop and/or adapt revolutionary techniques or methods for addiction research (or those with promising future applicability to SUD research), and/or
- Test an innovative and significant hypothesis for which there is little precedent or preliminary data, and which, if confirmed, would transform current thinking in the field.
The CEBRA program is not intended for incremental research or extensions of ongoing projects. It encourages both established SUD researchers and investigators from other fields to propose novel approaches, tools, or conceptual frameworks relevant to SUDs.
Due Dates
- August 12, 2025
- March 10, 2026
- August 5, 2026
- March 10, 2027
- August 11, 2027
Letters of intent are requested 30 days prior to the application due date. All applications are due by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.
Funding Amount
- Maximum direct costs: $150,000 per year
- Total direct costs: Not to exceed $275,000 over a two-year project period
- Project duration: Up to 2 years
- Mechanism: R21 (Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant)
- No cost sharing or matching required.
Eligibility
Eligible applicants include:
- Public and private institutions of higher education
- Nonprofits (with or without 501(c)(3) status)
- For-profit organizations (including small businesses)
- State, county, city, township, and special district governments
- Independent school districts
- Native American tribal governments and organizations (federally recognized and other)
- Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities
- Faith-based and community-based organizations
- Regional organizations
- U.S. territories and possessions
- Non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities (foreign organizations) and foreign components of U.S. organizations
Individuals with the skills, knowledge, and resources necessary to carry out the proposed research are invited to apply.
Application Process
- Submission: Applications must be submitted electronically via NIH ASSIST, an institutional system-to-system solution, or Grants.gov Workspace.
- Required registrations: SAM, eRA Commons, Grants.gov (can take 6+ weeks; start early).
- Letter of intent: Not required but strongly encouraged; submit to NIDALetterofIntent@mail.nih.gov.
- Application instructions: Follow the NIH How to Apply - Application Guide and the specific requirements in the full funding announcement.
- Page limits: As described in the Application Guide and Table of Page Limits.
- Clinical trials: Applications may propose clinical trials (optional).
- Data management: All applications must include a Data Management and Sharing Plan.
Additional Information
- Review process: Applications are reviewed by NIDA-convened panels, with an emphasis on significance, innovation, and the potential for transformative impact.
- Expedited funding decisions are a feature of this program.
- Not responsive: Applications focused solely on alcohol as a substance of use/misuse are not eligible.
- Special considerations: Review NIDA’s special requirements and policies.
- Recent updates: The funding opportunity was updated March 31, 2025; applicants should review the full announcement for changes.
External Links
Contact Information