RFA-AI-27-016: Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRACs) (P30, Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

RFA-AI-27-016: Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRACs) (P30, Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This is a historical reference for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) notice of funding opportunity RFA-AI-27-016, Tuberculosis Research Advancement Centers (TRACs). The official NIH/Grants.gov announcement describes a P30 Center Core Grant intended to strengthen multidisciplinary tuberculosis research, shared research support, and mentorship for the next generation of TB investigators.

The 2026 cycle is closed. The official announcement set the application deadline at July 10, 2026, by 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization, and gave an expiration date of July 11, 2026. The official Grants.gov listing also identifies the opportunity as closed. I found no subsequent TRAC cycle announced in the official program record checked for this refresh, so this page should not be read as an invitation to submit a late application or as evidence that a new round is open.

At a glance

The funding figures are program-level planning figures, not a promise that every award would receive the same amount. The notice says that NIAID intended to commit $4,000,000 in FY27 to fund up to five awards and that proposed budgets should reflect the actual project needs while staying within the stated annual direct-cost expectation. The maximum project period is five years.

Program purpose

The TRAC program is designed for an institution that needs an organized center to support TB science across several investigators and research approaches. NIAID describes goals that include developing future scientific leaders, fostering multidisciplinary collaboration, supplying research resources and training, strengthening TB clinical research through training and access to clinical samples or data, and providing scientific leadership dedicated to TB research.

The notice builds on the TRAC model established in 2022 and aligns it with the NIAID TB Strategic Plan. The research scope must remain relevant to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, TB, and/or other nontuberculous mycobacteria. The notice also recognizes the rise of nontuberculous mycobacterial infections in the United States and says that TRACs may support NTM research in addition to TB work.

This is not a conventional single-project R01. A successful center would need to show why its institution has a sufficient group of TB researchers and potential users, how shared services add value beyond ordinary grant support, and how the center will develop researchers who are new to TB or early in their careers. The application must make the connections among leadership, cores, mentorship, services, pilot projects, and institutional support easy for reviewers to follow.

Required center structure

Every TRAC application must include an Administrative Core and a Developmental Core, plus at least two additional cores. The additional cores may be any combination of Basic Science Cores, Clinical Science Cores, and Specialty Cores such as statistical, bioinformatics, or omics support. The notice requires non-overlapping activities among cores, so the application must explain who owns each function and how users move between services without duplicating effort.

The Administrative Core oversees operations and provides scientific leadership. Its work includes coordinating communication and collaboration among cores, partner institutions, other TRACs, and NIAID staff; providing fiscal oversight; fostering synergy; and monitoring progress. The application should explain how the core will make resource-allocation decisions, evaluate utilization, communicate available services, and adjust the center as research needs change.

The Developmental Core provides short-term support for new investigators and researchers entering the TB field. Eligible activities can include preliminary-data projects, feasibility studies, high-risk or high-impact multidisciplinary collaborations, dissemination activities, and novel approaches to TB research. The core also supports training and mentoring. It must describe how pilot projects will be solicited, evaluated, prioritized, managed, and monitored. Every developmental pilot project requires prior NIAID approval before it begins.

Basic Science Cores may provide specialized technologies, laboratory services, disease models, BSL-3 activities, and training in replication and reproducibility. Existing institutional or standard services may be used when the application justifies their added value and demand; a TRAC should not simply replace commercially available services or ordinary costs that belong in an individual research grant.

Clinical Science Cores may support study design, protocol development, regulatory support, access to clinical data or samples, cohorts, and clinical research training. They should not provide routine clinical care or create new cohorts merely to fill a center description. Specialty Cores may provide essential statistical, bioinformatics, omics, or other focused capabilities when those services are unique and important to the local TB research program.

Eligibility and restrictions

The eligible domestic applicant categories are broad. They include public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations, small businesses, other for-profit organizations, eligible federal and local government entities, tribal governments and organizations, independent school districts, public or Indian housing authorities, faith-based or community-based organizations, regional organizations, and other eligible domestic organizations listed in the notice.

Foreign organizations may not apply. Non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are also excluded, and foreign components as defined by the NIH Grants Policy Statement are not allowed. A U.S. applicant may collaborate with investigators at other institutions through a sub-award, but the institution may submit or participate in no more than one TRAC application. The notice defines the one-application limit by the institution’s unique entity identifier or NIH institutional profile and separately bars duplicate or highly overlapping applications under review.

The allowed application types are New and Renewal. Clinical trials are not allowed. Human-subjects research and NIH-defined clinical research that are not clinical trials may still be proposed, but the appropriate human-subjects records and protections must be supplied. The scope must be TB or NTM relevant; applications that are not specifically focused on that research area are non-responsive and will not be reviewed.

Applicant organizations must complete and maintain the required registrations before submitting. The notice identifies System for Award Management (SAM), eRA Commons, and Grants.gov requirements. The same UEI must be used across registrations and the application. Each PD/PI must have an eRA Commons account, and the personal profile linked to that account must include a valid ORCID ID. If a PD/PI is also the institutional Signing Official, the notice requires separate eRA Commons accounts for the two roles. Registration can take six weeks or more, and obtaining an eRA Commons account can take up to two weeks, so these are pre-submission dependencies rather than tasks to leave until the deadline.

What the application needed to contain

The NOFO required a multi-project application following NIH Multi-Project (M) instructions, with program-specific instructions taking precedence where they differ. The package consisted of these required components:

1. Overall component: a six-page Research Strategy explaining the TB research environment, the need for a TRAC, the number and categories of researchers who would use its services, the added value beyond existing resources, and how the cores work together.
2. Administrative Core: a six-page component describing management, scientific leadership, communication, budget planning, resource allocation, progress monitoring, and collaboration.
3. Developmental Core: a twelve-page component describing pilot-project support, mentoring, workforce development, evaluation and prioritization, and compliance oversight.
4. At least two Cores: six pages for each core, explaining its service model, expected users, management, quality control, training, safety, feedback process, and added value.

The Overall component also carried the Data Management and Sharing Plan when the proposed research would generate scientific data. The plan had to use the NIH structured format and could not exceed two pages. It was not to be repeated in the other components. Letters from institutional officials were expected when the applicant institution provided financial or other resource support, such as matching funds. The application also needed the appropriate human-subjects, animal, regulatory, biosafety, resource-sharing, and other forms whenever the proposed work triggered those requirements. Appendix materials were limited to the items allowed by the NIH application guide.

For submission, applicants were instructed to use NIH ASSIST or an institutional system-to-system solution to prepare and submit the package through Grants.gov and track it in eRA Commons. The application had to arrive by the closed-cycle deadline, and any changed or corrected application had to be accepted by Grants.gov by the same deadline. The notice specifically warned that missing registrations or late corrections were not cured simply by having started the process before the deadline.

Review focus

Reviewers considered the standard scientific and technical merit criteria together with TRAC-specific questions. The application needed to show that the center would add value to the institution’s NIH-funded TB research and complement any existing TB center. Reviewers were asked whether the current research base and number of likely users justified the center, whether the strategic plan was comprehensive, and whether the plan would develop the next generation of TB scientific leaders.

The Administrative Core was assessed for its ability to support the program mission, allocate resources, coordinate communications, and encourage collaboration. The Developmental Core was assessed for its process for managing pilot projects and its ability to train and mentor new investigators and researchers entering TB. The additional cores were assessed for how well they supported the TRAC goals and added value to existing research.

Human-subjects protections, inclusion plans, animal welfare, biohazards, rigor, reproducibility, environmental resources, and budget fit could also affect review. The clinical-trial prohibition did not eliminate the need for human-subjects documentation when a proposed activity involved human participants but was not an NIH-defined clinical trial.

Historical planning value

Although the 2026 submission window has ended, the announcement remains useful as a planning reference for institutions watching for a future NIAID TRAC reissue. Its core lesson is structural: the center must demonstrate an operating system for TB research, not merely collect unrelated project ideas. A future applicant should preserve the distinctions among administrative leadership, developmental pilot support, and specialized service cores while checking any later NOFO for changed dates, limits, instructions, and eligibility.

No future TRAC deadline is stated in the official record checked for this refresh. Do not substitute a guessed date for a future round. Before preparing a new submission, confirm that NIAID has issued a new announcement and then use that announcement’s current instructions, application package, contacts, and deadline.

Official links and contacts

• Full NOFO: https://files.simpler.grants.gov/opportunities/e69c1e21-0138-46be-8b75-3d6967e80238/attachments/a6689148-46af-401d-bf4a-716afb9f9440/RFA-AI-27-016-Full-Announcement.html
• Grants.gov opportunity listing: https://simpler.grants.gov/opportunity/e69c1e21-0138-46be-8b75-3d6967e80238
• Scientific/research contact: NIAIDTRACS@mail.nih.gov
• Peer review contact: NOFOReviewContact@csr.nih.gov
• Financial/grants management contact: NIAIDFinancial-GrantsContact@mail.nih.gov

The program office is NIAID. The direct announcement URL was checked successfully during this refresh and remains the verified source for the closed cycle’s facts.