Jeffrey Rosen, Ph.D.
The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center
Dr. Rosen:
What I'm gonna do today is, is give a little overview of some of the tips that we've put together in terms of effective grant writing. And this is actually something we started doing a few years ago at Baylor for new faculty, and then the postdoc association asked me to give part of that talk to them as well. And Sandy Gray with Post [unclear] has actually built a website for the Baylor Post Doc Association. So most of this presentation is actually on the Baylor Post Doc Association website. To start with I, I wanted to add a few slides to my own presentation that Barbara Cochran [phonetic] in our Office of Research at Baylor put together when she just gave this talk for new faculty just a few weeks ago at Baylor. So most of the, the studies I'll be talking about, and, and information I'll be talking about is geared to grants from the National Institute of Health. But we can talk a little bit later about grants from other institutions as well. The reason the NIH, I think, is, is the focus of this type of talk is that's really the primary source of funding, as you know, for most of the research that we do. As a matter of fact Harold Varmous a number of years ago said that we shouldn't thank Baylor College of Medicine or M.D. Anderson when we get up and give talks, we should really thank the NIH, because that's where the money comes from.
It doesn't' come usually from M.D. Anderson or Baylor College of Medicine. So that's, that's true. The other reason is that at least in, in top ten medical schools in order to get tenure these days one of the key components is to have an RO1 funded grant. So you can have millions of dollars of other grants, but really they want to know that you have peer reviewed funding. And that's really the NIH RO1 funded research. So that's the key component of the NIH, and that these grants are peer reviewed buy study sections. We'll talk some more about that. They're renewable as well, which is a nice featured. One of the problems with example, the Department of Defense grants that they have, which are very nice, is that they're nonrenewable, so that you can start a program on them, but you can't maintain a program. In fact, I have a NIH Grant that is now in year 29, so I've been fortunate to keep this as a renewable source. These grants are portable. They actually belong to the investigators and can be taken with them to other institutions; mobile in science and you do move. The Department of Defense, for example, when they give the fellowships, the DOD fellowships actually belong to the institutions and the laboratory and not to the fellow.
Most NIH grants belong to the individual and can be moved with the individual. There are multiple mechanisms, as I said, the principle one that we'll talk about are what are called RO1 grants where investigator initiated research. And we'll talk about being a new investigator. There are K Series, which are very good for clinician scientists and really are underutilized mechanism at the NIH. There usually are funds available for K Series grants if you write a good proposal. C32's are training grants, and again we have a number of institutional training grants. We have one in molecular endocrinology at Baylor that I'm the PIN. They're program project grants. And then something that I'll just mention, which is important is that if you have an RO1 or many of these kinds of grants you can get minority gender specific supplements for trainees on these grants. So for example, I have an MD PHD student who's Hispanic and I was easily able to get a supplement for him. So really doesn't cost me anything to have him in the laboratory doing research. In fact, he has his own salary supplement. So these are relatively easy to get, and quite a few of my colleagues actually don't even bother applying for these, because they really don't know about them.
But in fact it's definitely worthwhile to apply for these supplements. Now the NIH process is nice, because it has three times a year that you can apply. A lot of there grants have, ACS for example, twice a year, or DOD once a year. So it's nice because you have three times during the year that you can apply for RO1's, February 1, June 1, October 1. However, you have to realize there's about a nine-month review period. So the time from you submit a grant till it goes through study section, goes through council till you actually hear something about funding is almost nine months. So you need to plan ahead. As a new faculty member going to another institution I always encourage people to write grants even before they move to the new institution, to start writing their grants ahead of time and at least submit it and get a review back prior to starting sometimes at a new institution. These scores are given percentiles and you normally will get a percentile score that is in a sheet that comes very quickly after now, because it's all computerized within probably three weeks to a month after study section. So you'll have a pretty good idea what your percentile score is, and your raw score as well. And that's important because sometimes you can actually consider revising your application and sending it back in even before you find out whether it's funded or not funded.
You can get a pretty good indication by the percentile. The pay line though is variable; it usually depends on the congressional budget. And I write, I suggest you write to the senators right now to try to increase the appropriation to the NIH, because if they fund it at 3% it's gonna really hurt the pay line this year. If they fund 8 1/2 or 9% increase for the overall NIH budget then we'll have a pretty good year next year. We've been in a good period the last five years. I think, it's been, funding has been very good. The percentiles have been funding down to 25 percentile most of the institutes. Some were better. We may go back to a bad period where we're funding at 10 or 12 percentile if funding is tight. So part of this depends on you're being proactive with our congressman and senators and convincing them through the professional societies that it's important to maintain this funding level. We've just finished a five-year doubling the people; the people like Bill Brinkly [phonetic] at Baylor had a lot to do so that the percentages increase over the last five years have been very nice. Now you will get then a critique, it used to be called a pink sheet. Most of you might wonder why was it call the pink sheet? Well it used to come on pink paper. Now it doesn't come anymore on pink paper, now it's an email attachment. So it's just a piece of white paper that you print out, but it's still called the pink sheet. And that pink sheet actually has critiques.
In the current system the, some of the grants may not even get full critiques, they may be triaged and you may just get shortened abbreviated critiques. So it doesn't make the cut if 2 out of the 3 people reading them on study section decide that it, it's not worthy of a long review, because it's not gonna make the cut then it might be triaged. So you'll just get shorter abbreviated critiques. If it goes through and actually gets a score and, and you get back a sheet with a score and a percentile, you should get fairly detailed, hopefully well thought out and constructive critiques back that you can respond to. Now that's not always the case. Remember the peer review systems only as good as your peers. And we'll talk about that a little bit more too. So you have the ability to revise this and resubmit. And again, we can talk a little bit about what you might want to do, if you want to revise a grant and how to write a cover letter and a beginning part of the grant that addresses the revisions. And then, of course, if you're lucky you get an award notice. Every once in a while the NIH, because it's so far behind will give you a 12 month award notice, but only 9 months to suspend it. So that, that's not that unusually where they, they're working so far behind that it takes them 2 or 3 months to get the award notice to you, but the grant is already started.
The, one of the keys of the NIH process is to have communication with the program administrator. If you're in a specific program at the NCI, for example, if you're working over here, you want to know who that program administrator is. They can be very helpful. They want to know you. If you're doing nice research they sort of take you as being an accomplishment that they've helped foster. So if, it looks good for them when they have people who do well in their programs and they will help you. The actual SRA's who are running the study sections are actually not supposed to talk to you directly, and they'll refer you to your program administrator. So there's two different branches of the NIH, there's a competitive review grants, which actually is, is in charge of the review process. And then there's the administration branch that is involved in administering the grants. That's different, for example, from ACS or NSF where a lot of times the administrator for the grants are actually people involved in the review process. So we can talk a little bit more about that later, but for the NIH the program administrator is really the person who can give you more information. They're supposed to sit in when your grants are being reviewed so that they can give you some feedback.
They're not always that helpful sometimes. And sometimes you can actually get a nice SRA; he'll give you some direct feedback. So it, it doesn't hurt sometimes to try to ask them for more feedback. Now the NIH application itself comes on this archaic PHS398 Form that they haven't changed for many years. It tends to crash most computers, and as you put all your figures in through PowerPoint and paste them in you'll probably freeze up your computer somewhere along the line and sit there swearing out it, because you have about 24 hours to finish it and it, it's frozen. And that's happened to all of us. People hear me screaming in my office all the time. So, and that doesn't matter, we've tried getting this to be Mac compatible and PC compatible and it doesn't seem to matter. It seems to always have a problem. So what I suggest is you do your grant in a word processing program and then paste it onto the form at the end, and do it in separate sections. Keep your CV, your budged, and the body of the grant separate, so that you actually have them as separate documents, back them up, and then paste them all on the form when you're all done. And that'll help you a lot. As you put in 10 megabit color pictures of your tumor pathology into your grant you will freeze up the PHS398 form.
It always freezes up. So it's important though when you do this to follow the formatting instructions in terms of the margins, the spacing, and the font size, and the page limitations. If you don't follow directions and you say, Oh I need to really put more in, I'm gonna make the font smaller. They count the number of spaces and characters and they will return it to you and you won't get your grant reviewed. Okay? Follow instructions. Don't think I can squeeze more in, and therefore it's gonna be better. If you squeeze more in it's gonna get bounced and get back to you. That's happened. Sometimes you'll have to go back and change the font. The other thing I can just mention as a reviewer, if you pack things in a format, think about what it's like to read 25 pages of single space type with no breaks between paragraph and using the smallest possible font that you can squeeze on the page. Okay? All right, so if you're the fifth or sixth grant that the persons read, you're gonna get a lower score just because of attrition. So make sure you actually space between paragraphs, indent, put some, I think, subtitles, underline them. Do things that make the grant a little more readable. You may have to leave out the buffer and PH concentration for an assay; nobody cares about that anyway.
Most people, especially new grant writers and investigators spend way too much time putting in the trivial details of the magnesium and the PH. That's not what they're looking for. They're not looking that you know that it's 10 milimoller triffs. [phonetic] Okay? What they're looking for is why you're doing the experiment, and if you know how to do the experiment. Okay? So make sure you give yourself enough space and, and format so you can actually stay within the page limits, which is, is usually 25 pages. And they have pretty good guidelines for how much they want. The most important page for this whole process is one page, and that's the page that lists your specific aims and has your overall objectives. And that one page really should be written, and the most attention paid to that one page. Because most reviewers read that one page and they decide, is this worth reading the rest of the grant? Now they're supposed to read the whole grant, but that one page can really influence how they feel about the whole grant. So if you have a nice objective, an interesting specific games, it will make them much more amenable to reading the whole grant, maybe seeing important preliminary data and giving you a good score.
So spend time on the one page that has your overall objectives and specific gains. And as I said, your application can be returned unreviewed if you don't follow the instructions. And this helps you miss a cycle, which means you're several months behind. The fiscal 2002 success rates were pretty good. About 25% of all new grants were funded as RO1's. That's, that's encouraging. I was hoping it will stay that way. It depends on funding, and almost 50% of competing continuations. So this indicates that, in fact, you have a better chance with a competing renewal than you do with a new grant. And, and I'll talk about that too a little bit later in terms of what you might do to make sure as your research evolves if you use a general title it might actually support research that really is quite different from what you started with, but it will go in as a competing renewal rather than a new grant, and that increases your chance of success. And recent study indicates that MD's fair as well as PHD's on both new and competing renewals. So there's no longer a degree bias in terms of MD's and PHD's. There's lots of information available with the national system of health has on websites. I'm gonna show you one of these in a minute. These are just some of them. Most of them are NIH.gov, but there's also NCI and NIH.gov, and, and a variety of others. These give you general information.
As I said, I'll show you one nice one from, that, that actually gives you very good, sort of, information about how to start thinking about writing a grant, so, from an NIADD. So I suggest, you know, you look at these websites and take some of the advice that they have. And they actually have tips for good grant writing as well. There are a bunch of these that give you information, specific information's on tips for good grant writing. And I just listed them all as Barbara did on a handout so you can have access to them. The one that I looked at is actually this one, which is from NIAID. And it actually is set up this way. And each of these is a link, which I, I didn't' activate here, but you can actually have, how to plan a grant in terms of just developing a strategy for planning an NIH grant, how you can choose a topic, should you respond to specific solicitation. So institutes put out what are called RFA's and program announcements. And a lot of times when you're actually devising your investigator initiated research it might fit into one of their RFA's or PA's. And that helps if, if you can put on the front sheet that this in response to a program announcement, the program administrator will look at that and say well this fits in my program that congress has told me I should be supporting, and so it may help you a little bit in terms of the funding.
The initiatives like this will help, but aren't necessary. So the nice thing about RO1's and investigator initiator award, if you have a cleaver novel idea you can apply for a grant on it. It doesn't have to fit into a fixed little niche that the NIH has designated as a program announcement. For years they used to call me up and ask, how does your grant fit into hormonal carcinogenesis? And the program administrator always had trouble writing her report, because my grant didn't fit this nice little niche that they, they were looking for. The probably means that you're, hopefully, doing a little bit more original research, and it, that's the nice thing about investigator initiated research. So some RFA's and PA's may have special requirements. They may have certain deadline. There may be special study sections that will review these. So, so you should look and see what the requirements are. There's usually a pretty detailed description of RFA's and PA's that, that explain. Sometimes program announcements will be general, and say, this will be in affect for 2 years. And so that you can submit a grant anytime in the next two years, and just make a note that this is in response to this program announcement on the front page. So the key things, and you probably heard this before, is this idea of hypothesis driven research.
And so, as I say, develop a solid hypothesis and try to build your application around that. Now you decide the kind of award that you think you should be applying for and the duration. So you have flexibility on this. You could as for 2 years of support, 3 years of support, 4 years, or 5 years. Most people ask for 5, assuming they'll be cut if anything. But it's better to ask for more than less. That's one of the basic rules. There's a modular budget that you can put in. You can use that, but you don't have to use a modular budget. So some of these things you have flexibility with. And then, as I said, with the modular budget a, a, your, it takes a lot of the work out so you don't have to worry about itemizing and justifying everything. That was supposed to save them money, but in fact, it's cost the government more money in terms of inflation. So they may actually eliminate the modular budget, it's hard to know what's gonna happen in the next couple of years. As you'll see they have some materials that are called Just In Time Materials. And we'll talk about that in a minute. These deal with a majority of the approval forms that you need from your institution that you have to have before you do human research, animal research, biosafety, recombinant DNA.
All of these things used to be required prior to sending the grant in, and they wouldn't even review it. Now they've gotten a little more sensible, and have what's called Just In Time, which means that it, you have to have these done before your grant can be funded. But I suggest getting them done up front anyway, because it'll help you in the long run. There's some advice for new investigators. It'll define who is a new investigator. And it is clear that if you make it past the triage stage that when there's a discussion of a grant that reviewers have different expectations for new applicants. And they really try to support you at study section. I think one of the disappointing things sometimes at the, the NIH now is that the triage system, if you don't make it to the actual discussion during the study section, that sometimes those helpful hints that new investigators might have gotten back, even though they didn't make the cut the fist time, are lost. So if you do get through and you actually have discussion as a new investigator, you may get some very helpful criticisms back where they really want to help you. We're not supposed to rewrite the grants, but it's amazing how many helpful suggestions they might make to suggest well if you do this, you know, and resubmit it'll help you when you resubmit your grant.
So what I'm gonna do now is actually go over my, sort of, top 10 list, though David Letterman actually had a top 10 list. So I guess I have to have a top 9 list, but Sandy found this for me. So these are actually sort of the way I view when I start looking at my grant. And I, I should mention that, you know, everybody says, well, you know, if you plan this properly it's not a stressful process. Well my attitude about writing grants is that it is a stressful process, and if you're not worried about your grant you're probably doing something wrong. So I, I don't think you can totally take the stress out of writing grants. And I think it is important to, to have a little bit of anxiety. however, the key, I think, is to, to try to minimize that anxiety. And to try to do things that will help you organize things ahead of time. I've had colleagues who actually flew their grants to Washington in the old days. This is before FedEx. They'd have to get on a plane and fly the box of grants up so they could drop it in the Division of Research Grants prior to the deadline. I, I, even with FedEx I had a colleague for our mouse mollis contortion who drove to Hobby Airport to get it on the FedEx carrier at 3 in the morning. So that's probably not the best way to plan your grant.
I would suggest that you start, and I would start actually quite a while ahead of time. And I think one of the things that can happen to new faculty is you get so many responsibilities that you're involved with ahead of time that, in fact, this really hurts you getting your laboratory set up, and getting independent funding. So one of my number 10 I think advice is to wait until your laboratories set up and funded before you agree to take on too many other tasks. There's incredible number committees that seem to develop at institutions like Baylor and M.D. Anderson that you can be asked to be on; everything from the Post Doctoral Association Committee to a, all sorts of things. And so, you know, in fact you don't have to be on all these committees right away. And I would suggest that you pick maybe one or two that you think might be useful, and, and say no I really can't do this till I get my lab set up. Same thing with teaching. I think I really enjoy teaching, but if you're teaching a major graduate medical school coarse, or even some institutions undergraduate course, this can eat up your time. So you want to have some protected time for the first year or two so you can get your grants in, get your lab up and running. And then maybe when there's a little bit of a critical mass then you can take on more of these responsibilities. And the same thing goes with review panels. You can be asked to serve on study sections.
And unfortunately the DOD and ACS, and sometimes the NIH will do this even when you're a new assistant professor. Well don't ever go on an NIH study section until you're tenured faculty, because it takes 3 meetings a year. If you do it right it's gonna take a couple of weeks each time you're reviewing the grants. So it really eats up your time. It's good to go on a review panel once. And the reason you want to do it once, you want to add hock and go once to find out how the process works. It's very helpful to go there and sit there and be part of the process. Do it one time when you're assistant professor, you'll learn something. But don't agree to go on a study section or review panel until you're actually at a point where you're funded and your lab is set up. So that's what, that's sort of the number 10. The number 9 I think is, is, deals with trying to get the data collected to actually apply for a grant. And I think it's really important to begin collecting data on a grant topic at least a year prior to applying for a grant. And so normally you might have a grant that will have 3 or 4 specific aims. You really actually probably shouldn't have more than that, because a lot of people put in grant, which are overly ambitious and don't have the focus they need to be funded.
So, so try to initially put in a grant that's limited to say 3, or at most 4, specific aims, and try to accumulate some preliminary data for 2 or 3 of these aims. Now you don't have to have all the data, obviously, for the aims, cause that means you've already done it, but you should actually have some data that's relevant to the specific aims; especially maybe the first or second one. And I always have a, a sort of philosophy that you always have some data that you hold in reserve. And that means that you're always ahead of where you say you're going to be. Now that may seem dishonest, but in fact that's actually necessary. Cause by time you get your grant funded and then you're writing your first progress report and competing renewal, if you start from zero you'll always be a little bit behind. But if you start with a little head start by having some extra data in reserve you'll be better off. And so you always know a little bit more than you write in the grant, then you always have a little data in reserve. And so you want to always be a little ahead, cause it's hard to catch up when you're behind. Now in terms of the actual specific aims and getting preliminary data for them, if you're a Post Doc here at M.D. Anderson and you're working for a principle investigator on his project and you know what you want to do, you now have a potential job offer somewhere else, you might actually want to negotiate with your mentor here to spend part of the time finishing up the project in his lab where you can generate data that you can take with you and work on independently as an independent investigator.
It's really important to discuss that with there person that you're working with. What project can I take with me? I've had a couple fellows actually, Bob Matusick is one who was one of my first fellows who said he wanted to work on prostate cancer and we started cloning some genes that were expressed in the dorsallatal prostate. My lab doesn't work on prostate, but it turned out Bob isolated a gene, and quite a few years later with another Post Doc we actually made transgenic mice and developed the first prostate cancer mouse model that way. But Bob spent 6 months building a library, screening the library, pulling out this gene while he was finishing up papers and working on his Post Doctoral project in my lab, which dealt with prolactin and mammary gland development. So there was nothing wrong with that, it helped him. Because when he wrote his grant he actually had a little bit of the new data that he could work on. Now that's a project, which was different from what he was working on. But there, you also may be in a situation where in a big lab working on lots of different projects, and the question is if you make an interesting observation can you take that with you, or will your lab continue to work on it?
I think one of the big mistakes people make is, so I'm gonna go out and work on this project. And the Howard Hughes I came with also working on the project. I mean, it's just never gonna work. When you set up your own lab, I don't care how smart you are, you can't compete with 30 people back in your old lab working on the same project. You have to have a defined project. So if you have that kind of discussion with your mentor, and I've done this with quite a few P fellows in my life, they take part of a project with them. And it's their project. And I may even help them and collaborate with them, but it's their project and they can write it up as a grant. And, you know, most, I think, situations work out pretty well that way, but you have to discuss that ahead of time. A lot of times these days with gene discovery it's not a problem, because you pull out lots of different genes in arrays and other things, and you'll have an interesting one, and there's more than any one lab can ever study. So if you want to go study that particular gene and its function, you know, then just talk about that with your mentor and try to develop the data then that's geared to that specific question while you're still as a, doing a Post Doctoral fellowship. Or maybe junior faculty member working under the protected mentoring of another senior faculty member.
The, I think, proof that you can do something is that you've published something where you'll have a publication submitted in high quality journals before you submit the grant. I think it's really important to validate that you have the, the expertise to do this when you're a new investigator. So it's, it's important to have gotten your papers written up and published. And you need to do that. There's too many people I know who leave and will have all these unfinished ends and haven't up papers, and then they write a grant and they wonder why they haven't gotten funded. Well the difference between getting funded and not funded is probably that you have a, a high quality publication that's out there that sort of tells the reviewers, yes this person not only can do interesting experiments, but he can actually complete a project and write something up and get it published. So organize your data in the lab in terms of, you know, what you want to try to do to actually put it together in terms of publication. And try to get that done before you actually are writing your grant. Now that's not always possible. Sometimes you'll have papers that are, these days that have been submitted and revised and going through this agonizing process of revision that happens all the time.
But at least, you know, you have a draft of a paper that you can append to your grant. I think that's really important. And I think it's important to, I think, think about the research you're doing in the context of how can I organize it into a publication. And when you do that and you have a nice publication then you will not need to put down the triss [phonetic] and the magnesium concentrations. It's the people who don't have the publications who list the triss and the magnesium concentrations. Because, you know, that's all they can do to prove that they know how to do RTPCR. That's not gonna get your grant funded. What you want is to prove that you have ability to synthesize data together to answer an important question. I think, as I said, the most important thing for me is the questions that you're asking. You want to ask unique questions. You don't want to be afraid to emphasize the originality of what you're doing. But as I, as I point out here, you don't want to use the words novel in ever third sentence, which people do all the time. I think that, actually most reviewers these days sort of smile when they see that, because it's sort of one of the most over used words in science. In fact, Nature I think did a little study a number of years ago on how many times the word novel was used in papers.
But it is important to emphasize what's unique, what's original about what you're doing, and what the unique question you're asking. I think the, the argument that I see is if you propose to do an experiment in organism X, it's already been done in organism Y, it's not gonna get funded unless you tell them what you're gonna learn that's different. Because an awful lot of people way, well I know how to do this in flies and I'll do this in worms, or visa versa. Or I'm gonna study this particular gene in this breast cancer line, which I've already studied in this fiber blast cell line, and that's gonna help me cure breast cancer. Well you can't do that. You have to tell them what really is gonna be learned that's new and important. What approach are you taking that's a little different that warrants them giving you some money to fund this grant? And so just don't assume that they're gonna understand this. Tell them! Tell them in a way that makes them appreciate that you've thought about what you're working on and the kind of research that you're doing, and you understand the big picture. And so it's really important, I think, to, to emphasize this, and try to emphasize what you think the important questions are that you're gonna try to answer that may actually help us learn something new.
And in fact, I think this is important, because I don't think you know what the research is gonna do 5 years down the line. In fact, I used to argue that if I new every outcome of every experiment they probably wouldn't be worth doing. There's one of the things they ask you for anticipated results, and problems, and shortcomings. And I think you might be able to do that for the first year or two, but after that if your research is any good it's gonna generate new questions and new ideas. And it won't be doing the same thing that you predicted 5 years ago. And so you're gonna always have new questions that are coming along, and you have to be smart enough to sort of explain to the study section where you're gonna be doing something that's a little bit more creative. Now I think, as I said, the key issue for NIH RO1 is hypothesis driven research. You'll get back critiques that say this is not hypothesis driven. That means I want to look and see what's happening, but I have no idea. Okay? So if you write down I'm just gonna look and see what happens, and that's called discovery research. And in fact, you could make a big argument today that a lot of interesting things have been found that way in science. And I think there's nothing wrong with it.
Phil Liter [phonetic] said this, I mean, you make a transgenic mice, you over express mic, [phonetic] and hey, you find something out interesting that we didn't know. So, or you do, you know, just gene arrays and you pull out genes. A lot of that I think is, is worthwhile, but unfortunately study sections don't like that kind of research. What they want is the mouse already made with an interesting phenotype type and now you're gonna study why it has that phenotype. Or you've discovered some gene on gene arrays and now you want to try to figure out what their function is. They don't like you writing in a grant saying I'm gonna build the transgenic mouse, or I'm gonna do gene arrays just to look and see. And, and that's unfortunate. So you have to have some of that data sort of ahead of time. Now the DOD is a little bit better, they have actually, the Army Breast Cancer Program in particular will have grants where they say they don't want preliminary data, and they'll give you 2 years of funding to do something where you might build a new model if you can convince them it's worth building. But, but for NIH for RO1 grants the study sections will want to see, sort of, something that is hypothesis driven and with potential outcomes and limitations. And I think, as I said, you could argue that you can't predict all the outcomes and limitations, but you need to give them a sense that you've thought about what the experiments gonna be.
This is not a student qualifying exam where they give you a proposal and they predict that there's gonna be one band on the gel right where it's supposed to be, and you know, that's the result their gonna get. Research doesn't work that way. So when you do it you have to predict that it may not just be in a single band, and there may be problems. What are the problems gonna be? What are the alternatives? One of the thing the students always fail their qualifying exams for is when they build everything on a pyramid where there's one little idea that is critical for everything else. If you build your grant that way, and you don't have enough support for that initial key concept, you may get killed. So make sure you have alternatives, other pathways that you can take if you want to study something. Don't be overly ambitious. This is really one of the main criticisms you see. I just helped a new faculty member at Baylor who's a very good C-elegance [phonetic] researcher who put in about three grants worth of research into one grant and sent it in. And it was clear he couldn't do all of that in his own laboratory in 10 years. So he took half of it out, more than half, and resubmitted just a small subset of the experiments that were focused, and he got funded.
The first time he didn't get funded. I would say that's probably the biggest criticism. If you're a very good researcher, you've published papers, you have good ideas, the biggest criticism the first time is you're gonna put in an overly ambitious unfocused grant. And that comes back, I think, 80% of the time for people. So focus it, limit it, try to do something to get yourself going. Keep those other ideas around. Don't ever delete anything. Put it in a separate file on your word processor. You can put it in as a separate grant. You can maybe apply to a different agency with some of those other ideas. Okay, so probably half of the work in putting in a grant is not just the science, it's the animal biosafety, all the different forms. Human subjects forms if you're doing human subjects research. So start working on these right away. You don't have to do them, they have Just In Time now. So they don't have to be this is wrong, it doesn't have to be reviewed before the grant is reviewed, it has to be approved before the grants actually funded. But half the grant, if you ever looked at any grant is the science. The 25 pages is science, the rest of it is all this other stuff that goes in there, which deals with lots of issues. If you're using vertebrate animals you have to justify why you want to use vertebrate animals.
The number of animals you need to use. That there are not alternative to using vertebrate animals. If you 're gonna do human subjects research the bar even gets raised higher. So you have to think about these things ahead of time. You can't just say I'm gonna do, make transgenic mice and do a carcinogenesis study. Because if you do that they're gonna say well how many mice do you need in each group and why did you choose these particular strains of mice. You have to justify all that. So you need to think about these things ahead of time, so it helps to get these forms filled out. It's amazing how, how much time it takes to do this. If you want to use, you know, retroviruses in mice, so you're gonna use some sort of gene therapy approach, or whatever. These are all requiring now more and more detailed protocols, and, and, so I suggest you start on those. You borrow copies of successful protocols from people who have already done it. You're allowed to plagiarize, by the way, in this case. So you can copy things that other people have written that work. I will guarantee you that you will never submit any of these things the first time and be approved.
And even now every year when I have to, or every 5 years when I have to redo these they come back with statements like, this has to be written, you know, the layman's summary for a fourth grader. And so you have to rewrite the layman's summary. And I say my daughters in fourth grade she can understand this. They say, I'm sorry you still have to rewrite it. My daughters 21 now, it doesn't work anymore, but you still have to do that. You're gonna have to explain things. You're gonna have to go back and justify various drugs that you're using, various concentrations, and various protocols. So start these ahead of time, as I said, with the Just In Time system now you don't have to do this before. This is incorrect. And more than half the grant is gonna be these kinds of things. Now I think it's really important these days not to work in your own isolated environment. Don't think about, the old idea of a scientist having his own lab, with his own equipment, working in his, you know, 400 square feet, and doing everything by himself is gone. Science isn't that way any more. Science is multidisciplinary. Science requires expertise that's greater than any one person could possibly be trained in, so that you need to actually think about that. I think it's really important when you're a new investigator to obtain letters of support to include with your grant from experts in the area in which you are not.
And I'll give you some examples for that. So this could either be a technique or a biological system, for example, breast cancer. So you could be an outstanding kinesis person, you know everything about kinesis and how to assay them. And now you want to study these in, in human breast cancer, but you haven't a clue about human breast cancer. So get a clinician here at M.D. Anderson or across the street who's willing to help you, and will help write a letter and say I'll be happy to help you interpret your results in breast cancer. Alternatively you could be a clinician who's an expert on breast cancer and now wants to work on kinesis, but you don't have a very solid background. So get a letter from someone who is an expert who can help you do the assays that you need to do. Don't be shy about doing that. If you're a new investigator it doesn't hurt to have a co principle investigator sometimes who can help you with things as well. You don't always need to have them as a Co PI. If you can't list them as a Co PI, at least get a letter from them saying they'll be happy to act as a consultant. So you can't do everything in your own lab. Don't be afraid to collaborate. I think that's the key to success. The first grant I ever sent in was with another new faculty member, we put in as a joint grant and we were able to get funded. Cause she had expertise that complimented what I was doing in the lab.
So I think it's really important to do that. And there's always going to be areas that you're not an expert in, and you're gonna want to be able to, to get somebody to help you. Okay, this is something I've talked about earlier, and this is the idea of giving your grant a title, a general title in this case, so that as the research evolves your grant actually can keep the same title. You say, well that's silly, why, it's not the same grant anymore? Well of course it's not the same grant, but it's a competing renewal, not a new grant. And as I said, the chance of getting funded on a competing renewal is a lot better than on a new grant. Statistically it's easier. I've showed you the data to receive funding on a competing renewal than a new grant. When you have a broad title your research can evolve, it can change directions; it can still fit within the same topic. So my grants called Hormonal Regulation of Breast Cancer. And it's changed a lot in 30 years, but it's still under that same general title. So I think the reason for this is now you're only allowed 2 revisions on a grant. And if you go in with a grant and it doesn't' get approved you get an A1. Then you can send it back for a second time, it gets an A2, then that's done. That's the end of that title.
So you have to change the title if it doesn't get funded after 2 revisions. But the chances are that once you get into the system with a good general title on a grant, you might be able to use that for a while, and your grant will be reviewed as a competing renewal not a new grant. Now I think it's very important to determine who reviews your grant. The peer review system is only as good as your peers. The other biggest complaint people have besides, I, I see in terms of maybe being nonfocused and having overly ambitious grants is that their grants go to the wrong study section or the wrong review panel. And so it's important to try to direct your grant to the right review panels. So use key words in the abstract in the title to help steer your grant to the best review panel. That's the first thing. Check your program announcements. We've already talked about that. And go online and see who's on each review panel. You can look for the center of scientific review. You can actually see the different review panels. There's been changes in the last year in a number of the review panels. The old pathology B that probably a lot of people here might send their grants to is gone. it has a different name now; some of the same people, but a different name.
So try to look up the names of the panels. Read the names of the reviewers who are the permanent members. Go look in Pub Med and see what they've published. Do your homework. If you find a panel that has 2 or 3 people whose names you know, who publish in your area, you're probably gonna be better off than in a panel where there's no one with the right expertise. Now, I mean there's always a risk here, because you can send it to a certain panel, and then the person you hoped that would be there that's the expert isn't there. They decided their not gonna go that time. They have an ad hock person come. Where in the case of the C-elegance Lab at Baylor, his old advisor was on the panel that his grant should have gone to, so they sent it to a different panel, which was really a shame, because that was the wrong panel for his grant to go to. So he had to write a letter complaining about that. But you can write letters. You can write a letter to the head of the scientific review, and you can also look up who the SRA is. And this is one case prior to the actual process where you can actually ask the SRA, say this is a grant that's perfect for your panel, please, you know, consider this grant. So I like writing those letters. I doesn't always guarantee it's gonna go where you want, but at least it's worth the effort. I feel much better about having to try to control my own fate somewhat.
If I've written letters, gotten the grant to go to the right panel, and then if I don't get funded at least there was not much I could do. But it went to the wrong panel and there was no one right with the expertise that it needed, I think that's really a problem. So, so look this up on the web. You go to the NIH.gov, look in the center for scientific review, pull up the description of the review groups, and try to pick ones that really are appropriate for your grant. Okay, this is probably I think the main thing that I think is important. And again I'll be, I'm amazed how many people, both senior and junior faculty don't do this. Finish your grant a month before it's due. Okay? And then have it read by students or fellows, not only in your own lab, but also by those people who are senior to you say in your department or other departments who are experts, as well as someone outside the area. So there's two things here. Now if you don't have a, if you're a new faculty member and you got institution X and you meet the chair, and he says welcome tot he department, ask him who your senior faculty mentor is. A lot of schools don't do this very well. A lot of chairs don't do this very well. But tell him you want somebody who's a senior faculty member who can show you the ropes. This is helpful not only in terms of grants, but for other things in the department too. So it's good to have a senior faculty mentor for each junior faculty member.
I think the departments that have done this have been much more successful than those that haven't. So this grant, first thing you do is you have it read by the students and fellows, possibly in your lab, and they give you critiques. But they're been sort of brain washed to, to know the gospel according to Jeff, so that they're gonna not really criticize you very heavily. So you want to give it then to people outside who are not afraid to give you constructive criticism. So it has to be somebody who's willing to say, not just pat you on the back and say that's wonderful, but is willing to say, this has a hole in it, or that's not really very carefully thought out, or you need to change this. And so don't be afraid to do that. This should be, I think, somebody who's a senior faculty member in your, your department who maybe knows your area of research. It's really equally important to give it to someone outside your area. You'd be surprised how much jargon there is in science and how incomprehensible it is. And this is not just a language problem with people who are nonnative English speakers, this is a problem with people who are native English speakers, but don't really understand how to explain something clearly, because they get so swallowed up by the terminology of what you're working in.
So make sure someone can read it and understand it, because that's probably who's gonna review it. It may not be the expert. A lot of times you'll get 3 people on a panel, a primary, a secondary, and an outside reader who'll look at a grant to decide whether it's gonna be reviewed or not. The primary person might be an expert. He may actually know what you're working on in the field. The other two, it's unlikely they'll be experts. So it may be that they'll have to understand it as an outside person might have to understand it from your own institution. You need to do this enough ahead of time that you can actually make revisions. If you get it back the night before it's not gonna help you. You need to get it back so that you can make these changes, move things around, change specific aims, and make the important, I think, revisions. I mean, I, we do this on every publication we send out as well. So I mean, we, before we ever send a paper out we try to do this as well. I would do this on grants especially though. Because I think if you don't get this kind of feedback ahead of time you're just gonna be wasting your time when you send your grant in, regardless of how bright you are and how much training you have. So those are the sort of top 10 things, I think, that will help you in terms of trying to put a competitive grant in.
I should mention now that anytime you're writing something for the NIH, you can easily take part of that and submit it to the ACS. Or you can submit part of it to NSF, or the Leukemia Society, or any one of a number of agencies, Damion Runion. [phoentic] So, so anytime you're doing this you shouldn't just send one thing out and put all your gamble on one, one grant. When you're starting a lab out you should try to apply for multiple sources of funding. Now you can't put the same specific aims in and expect to get duplicate funding. But an awful, many, many times though you can get some of the things funded under one agency, and other funded under another agency. The other thing I would suggest is that there's an awful lot of small grants at institutions. M.D. Anderson has a spore, for example, in prostate cancers. They have pilot and feasibility grants. These are small grants. Usually 35 to 50,000 dollars, but they're very good grants to get going. You can get a few of those and get 200,000 dollars and actually get your lab up and running before you ever get your NIH RO1 grant. I have a former junior faculty member who was in my lab who's at John Hopkins now.
She actually went to John Hopkins as a non tenure track position, because once you're tenure track they start the clock ticking, and it's up and out after 7 years. And so she decided she wanted to go as nontenure track. She got a few hundred thousand dollars in grant. Got here lab up and running. Has a cell paper now. And now she's putting in her first RO1 application. And she asked to be converted over to tenure track just this last year. So there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, try to apply for small grants. Get your lab up and running. And, and sometimes it actually takes the pressure off you when you move in, in those types of situations. You don't always have to move to a tenure track position. But you want to move somewhere where you can develop into a tenure track position and you can evolve into a tenure track position. So, so you, most institutions once you go as a level of instructor or higher will allow you to apply for your own grants. You can apply for small grants. And eventually you can develop a program that you think is competitive at the RO1 level. That's not always necessary. There's sometimes you have projects that you can take with you that you have enough preliminary data that you can apply for an RO1 off the bat and get funded.
So I think it depends on your situation, but you shouldn't be afraid to start out small, apply for small start up grants from the institution, from the local agencies. For example, in Texas there are lots of local funding through the American Heart ACS, but you can get small grants, not nationally competitive grants, but small local Texas grants. So those are usually worthwhile applying for and, and help you a lot getting your lab up and running. And so when you're applying for grants, again, on the word processor save everything. You can cut and past it and move it around, send it to a number of different agencies. I used to tease that you could take the same grant and just replace breast by prostate and send it to the DOD and probably get funded; just a single find and replace. So I would, I would, you know, encourage you to leverage the time you spend writing grants, and use it for multiple different agencies, and not put everything, all your eggs in one basket. So, I think I'll stop there. I haven't quite filled up the hour, but almost. And I'll be happy to answer questions. So, thanks very much! Well we have time for a few questions if you. Yes?
Audience:
A simple question, but what is a review date?
Dr. Rosen:
So then that's each review panel has a senior scientist who helps organize that panel. So if you look in each study section they'll be a name of the person who's the administrator. That's the senior research administrator for that panel. And they're usually people who've, to be honest with you, sometimes they're failed scientists. They're people who have actually gotten out of the lab and are, are working now for the NIH in this capacity. They're very important though; because with the chairman of the study section they help organize who's actually gonna serve on that study section. A lot of times when people can't come they'll help get ad hock people to come and ad hock on the study section. And good ones can be very helpful. And there are, a lot times cause they work for the federal government they sort of spout the party line. They'll tell you, I'm sorry I can't tell you anything. I, I know they won't do it on email or anything written down that the government can see. But on the phone occasionally, though these days they may be taped, who knows, they, they occasionally will tell you very helpful things. And, and I usually ask them questions and ask them for feedback.
Audience:
Tell us to not to the...
Dr. Rosen:
Program administrator.
Audience:
Program administrator, but we can go ahead and there's nothing wrong with talking to them and asking them a question or...
Dr. Rosen:
No. I think it's fine. I think sometimes you can say, is there anything you can tell me that I should know. and they may just say, no talk to your program administrator. Sometimes they'll say, yes there was this one issues that, you know. So I've had, I've had both experiences with program administrators where they've actually been, I mean SRA's where they've been helpful. Yes?
Audience:
You mentioned that some of the grants are actually portable. What happens if you move outside the United States?
Dr. Rosen:
Ah. Good question. So you have to get approval from the NIH. Usually you have to have another academic appointment in another academic institution. Within the United States it's sort of a formality. If you're going outside the United States, the NIH has fund, does fund research outside the United States, but it's more difficult. And I think it would have to be under a special situation where they feel that that research is not being done, it's important research, but it's not being done in the United State, somewhere else. It's gotten harder. As money gets tighter, the, that becomes a real issue. If you're going to a non academic situation, of course, usually you have to turn your grant back into the NIH. Yes?
Audience:
Where can we get information on funding agencies?
Dr. Rosen:
At Baylor we have an office within our office of the vice president, Barbara Cochran runs and she has a list of all these agencies that actually provides funding. I'm sure M. D. Anderson has a comparable grants administration office that will have a list of all these small agencies. At Baylor also we send around notices all the time on the website about these various deadlines. So whenever there's a pilot and feasibility grants for the spore, for example, there'll be an announcement on the website saying that they would like to get usually a short proposal that they'll review. And so, I, I know you must have a grants contracts office here that will do that. And there's no real, there aren't, I don't know of one website that lists that all conveniently as a single website thought. Okay. Thank you very much. Good luck guys.
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