Sometimes, the biggest barrier to a major National Institutes of Health (NIH) research grant is the few thousand dollars it can require to get a grant ready for submission. Researchers need to design studies, gather data and analyze it to show grantmakers that their research ideas are viable and worth an investment.

In May, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine announced three rounds of small grants over the next year aimed at helping junior and mid-level faculty with grant application starting costs that can derail even the most promising research. By July, the school completed the first round, making more than 30 grants totaling almost $260,000. Two more rounds of funding will be available to junior research faculty this year, with application deadlines of Oct. 1, 2024, and Feb. 1, 2025. The application for an accelerator grant can be found here.

In the first round of funding, school of medicine faculty reviewers awarded grants of between $3,000 and $15,000 to 33 associate professors, assistant professors and instructors in 18 departments across the school of medicine.

In addition to funds from the school of medicine and its departments, the program also attracted philanthropic support from Nancy Grasmick, Johns Hopkins University alumna and former superintendent of the Maryland Department of Education, as well as the Erwin & Stephanie Greenberg Foundation, longtime supporters of Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The grant dollars can be spent at one or more of the school of medicine’s “cores” ¾ nearly 40 centralized centers with equipment and services that researchers can share. They include powerful confocal microscopes that can create 3D images of living cells, machines that can perform billions of gene assays in only a few hours, as well as bioinformatics analysis and many other cutting-edge research tools. 

While both efficient and relatively inexpensive, the core services and equipment are not free. Their expense can present a barrier to researchers, who often have to raise dollars specifically for these preparatory studies ¾ or incur the costs themselves.

“Helping our faculty members with grant-related costs makes perfect sense,” said Theodore DeWeese, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and dean of the medical school. “How do we remain the world’s preeminent institution for science and medical discovery? By removing barriers to innovation.”

Mollie Meffert is an associate professor of biological chemistry and neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She studies some of the gene-control mechanisms that contribute to long-term changes in brain function, with a particular focus on molecular mechanisms that can cause diseases of the nervous system.

In July, Meffert received an accelerator grant that will allow her to work with the High Throughput Sequencing Center, which is part of the Genetic Resources Core Facility (GRCF) on the 10th floor of the Blalock Building. The core is capable of providing billions of gene sequences on samples supplied by the research client. Meffert will use the data from the GRCF to demonstrate to funders that her research idea is a good investment.

“We need to compile strong preliminary data in our grant applications,” says Meffert. “The Grant Accelerator Program will help us do that. The program is a really exciting resource for Hopkins faculty, and I greatly appreciate the foresight and dedication of its organizers and reviewers.”

Assistant professor of neurology Marjan Gharagozloo’s research focuses on finding “therapeutic targets” for progressive multiple sclerosis (MS), a form of the disease for which current treatments offer limited benefit.

“Specifically, I plan to use single-nuclei RNA sequencing to investigate the molecular pathways that are associated with inflammation and neuronal death in MS in experimental models,” she says.

Like Meffert, Gharagozloo will purchase GCRF’s RNA sequencing services.

“We will get high-resolution analysis of gene expression in individual cell nuclei,” she says. “That will provide evidence of specific cellular responses and signaling mechanisms that cause damage or death of neurons in MS.”

Vice Dean for Research Antony Rosen helped design the Grant Accelerator Program and was one of 28 senior faculty members who reviewed applications.

“Dr. DeWeese told me he really wanted to invest in our junior and mid-level investigators to help them get past the initial funding barriers,” Rosen said. “The school of medicine is fully invested in their success, and if we can help them do their best work, that’s a win.”

Rosen and DeWeese agreed that the accelerator program would be most effective if it could keep paperwork to a minimum. Applicants are asked how much money they need, what experiments or analysis they’ll use to bolster their case with the NIH and when they plan to submit to the NIH.

Gharagozloo says the accelerator grant process was “very easy and straightforward. The grant will improve the quality of my application and increase the likelihood of securing funding.”

The entire process, from idea to announcement to the distribution of funds, took slightly more than a month. Rosen says he and DeWeese agreed that this grants process needed to be simple and quick for applicants and reviewers alike.

“It feels a little like a miracle we were able to get this done so quickly and efficiently,” says Rosen, who adds that school of medicine leaders hope to offer the accelerator grants again.

Last year, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine faculty were awarded more than $1 billion from funders to support their research efforts.

First Round of 2024 Accelerator Grant Awardees

Brit Adler | DOM

Ishrat Ahmed | Ophthalmology

Brendan Antiochos | DOM

Eric Christenson | Oncology

Carisa Cooney | Plastic Surgery

Joshua Doloff | Biomedical Engineering

Mohamed Farah | Neurology

Marjan Gharagozloo | Neurology

Matthew Ippolito | DOM

Maria Jimena Gutierrez | Pediatrics

Mary Beth Howard | Pediatrics

Emily Johnson | Neurology

Moonjung Jung | DOM

Reza Kalhor | Biomedical Engineering

Emily Li | Ophthalmology

Hernando Lopez Bertoni | Neurology

Mollie Meffert | Biological Chemistry

Brett Morrison | Neurology

Christopher Morrow | Psychiatry

Kimberly Ostrow | Neurology

Kunal Parikh | Ophthalmology

Sangeeta Ray | Radiology

Xiangbo Ruan | All Children's Hospital

Jungsan Sohn | Biophysics

Nityasree Srialluri | Medicine

Ho Lam Tang | Neurosurgery

Edward Twomey | Biophysics

Hilary Vernon | Genetic Medicine

Bin Wu | Biophysics

Natasha Zachara | Biochemistry

Xiaolei Zhu | Psychiatry