Subject: SBIR Contract Opportunity: Plant Genomic Models for Establishing Physiological Relevance of Bioactive Components as Cancer Protectants Applications are due November 5, 2004

This solicitation invites Phase I contract proposals from small business concerns that will assist with the development of products and services via the SBIR/STTR program to improve the health of the Americans. This is part of the SBIR program at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health.

Applications to develop and market new plant genomic and genetic resources for evaluating food bioactive components and for evaluating the food matrix in cancer prevention are requested. It is anticipated that these resource foods will simultaneously facilitate collaborative research among plant biologists, cancer biologists, and nutrition scientists to evaluate specific foods for their health benefits.

The overall objectives of this request are to:

(1) Develop plant mutants, transgenics, or other genetically modified food plants with deficient or elevated levels of potential bioactive compounds involved with cancer prevention. Examples might include deletion and over expression mutants for altered starch or antioxidants.
(2) Evaluate specific bioactive food components or the food matrix as modifiers of cancer risk and tumor prevention.
(3) Evaluate the food matrix as a modifier of the overall effectiveness of individual bioactive food components.

Phase I will involve development and screening of new plant genetic resources (transgenics, mutants, etc.) with modified levels of bioactive compounds. Development of food resources with both low (deficient) and high (overexpression) levels of bioactive compounds is desired to test model hypotheses and for comparative assessments.

Development of food resources with both low (deficient) and high (overexpression) levels of bioactive compounds is desired to test model hypotheses and for comparative assessments.

The announcement for this Solicitation can be found at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/SBIRContract2005/PHS2005-1.pdf The announcement (#204) is on p. 33-34 of this document.