Restoring Joint Health and Function to Reduce Pain (RE-JOIN) 2.0
This upcoming NIH grant will fund multidisciplinary research to better understand joint pain, improve joint health, and develop new treatments by advancing mapping, profiling, and modeling of joint tissues and pain mechanisms.
Funder: National Institutes of Health
Due Dates (Anticipated): December 2026 (Full application deadline, projected)
Funding Amounts: Expected 8 awards; award size not specified, cooperative agreement mechanism
Summary: Supports research to refine mapping of joint tissue innervation, enhance pain phenotyping, and develop new approaches for understanding and treating joint pain.
Key Information: This is a forecasted opportunity; dates and details may change upon official NOFO release.
Description
This anticipated funding opportunity from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), in collaboration with other NIH Institutes and Centers as part of the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long Term (HEAL) initiative, aims to accelerate advancements in joint health research. The program will support projects that:
- Refine and map the innervation of joint and peri-articular tissues by sensory neurons mediating pain.
- Enhance clinical pain phenotyping with multimodal profiling across diverse patient samples and disease conditions.
- Expand preclinical and New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for modeling joint disease.
- Test novel joint-targeted candidates identified in previous RE-JOIN phases.
- Focus on peri-articular tissues such as vasculature, synovium, adipose, myofascial tissue, and more.
- Prioritize secondary analysis of datasets and validation of methods in human samples.
- Improve data integration through the development or enhancement of joint atlases integrating imaging and molecular datasets.
The notice is provided in advance to allow potential applicants time to build multidisciplinary collaborations and prepare responsive projects.
