The Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Center for IBD and Celiac Disease Research Program aims to spark innovative and transdisciplinary research and develop new treatments or knowledge to improve the lives of all children with IBD and celiac disease for generations to come.  Through this mechanism we can harness the expertise of investigators already in place across Stanford and pivot their work toward pediatric disease and push research in novel directions to benefit children.  The research awards will help fuel early-stage, high-risk, high-reward projects not yet ready for NIH or other government funding. 

A multi-PI approach is strongly encouraged for this initiative where at least two of the lead investigators are from different disciplines. Collaborations between basic or data scientists and physician scientists are particularly encouraged. Single-PI applications will be considered if the scientific rationale is compelling. Proposals should demonstrate a clear potential for the research to generate robust preliminary data for future applications to external funding agencies. 

The awards will provide up to 2 years of funding to support a wide range of scientific approaches with the potential to advance our understanding of pediatric IBD and celiac disease including but not limited to the following areas: 

• Basic and translational research of disease mechanisms, therapeutic strategies, or treatment response in the areas of epithelial biology, microbiology, immunology, enteric nervous system.
• Development of novel technologies to advance IBD research, diagnosis or evaluation, disease monitoring, treatments, or disease/response prediction (biomedical or chemical engineering, computer science).
• Clinical research of novel treatment strategies or impactful health services, epidemiologic, outcomes, or health care disparities research.
• Computational or systems biological approaches to advance understanding of disease mechanisms, treatment targets, or treatment response.