BeHEARD Challenge offers grants for rare disease research

Applications are now open for the 2016–2017 BeHEARD (Helping Empower and Accelerate Research Discoveries) Challenge, which provides technology and financial grants for rare disease research. Hosted by the Rare Genomics Institute, the global competition is open to researchers, foundations and anyone whose research is constrained due to limited resources.

The 2016–2017 prizes will include more than $650,000 of technologies and services from top scientific companies, such as vector constructions from Cyagen Biosciences, mouse models from Charles River Laboratories, the Jackson Laboratory and Taconic Biosciences, drug repositioning services from Biovista, and drug discovery informatics from Collaborative Drug Discovery. Applicants to the challenge can select one or more technologies that they think would benefit their research and submit a proposal for each technology.

Research proposals will be evaluated by an expert panel of scientists, RG staff and company representatives, who determine winners for each technology based on the technology’s fit with the research and the potential for the research to advance rare disease treatments. All winners of the technology prizes will also be entered into a competition for RG’s cash research grants; the winners of the cash grants are determined by a combination of Facebook voting and the expert panel.

For more information on the competition and the application, visit www.raregenomics.org/beheard-competition. The deadline for applications is 28 February 2017.