NF Data Utilization (NDU) Grant

The NF Data Utilization (NDU) Grant by the Children's Tumor Foundation invites researchers to utilize curated datasets from the NF Data Portal to explore disease pathways and therapeutic targets in neurofibromatosis. With a focus on cutaneous neurofibromas and schwannomatosis, the program encourages applications that can rapidly generate preliminary data for validation. It supports researchers with varying levels of bioinformatics expertise, providing access to the Pluto Bio platform for data analysis.

This Request for Applications (RFA) invites researchers to leverage curated datasets from the NF Data Portal to uncover novel disease pathways, therapeutic targets, and biomarkers—ultimately driving progress in our understanding of NF biology and accelerating the development of new treatments.
To support this effort, CTF has partnered with Pluto Bio, an intuitive bioinformatics analysis and visualization platform where selected datasets are available for exploration. Upon successful creation of a Pluto account, RFA applicants will be able to view a summary of the available data here. Researchers with limited bioinformatics experience or institutional support are especially encouraged to apply; Pluto offers an accessible interface that enables robust data analysis regardless of prior computational training. Researchers may also use bioinformatics and statistical tools in addition to Pluto to interrogate these data if they deem appropriate, but must use data from the NF Data Portal. In addition to data from the NF Data Portal, awardees may also upload and analyze their own project-related data using a private workspace in Pluto. Pluto account access will be provided to awardees, and data access will be governed through Synapse. Researchers will be required to submit a publicly visible Data Use Access Request through Synapse in order to access the data.
Program Focus
The goal of the NF Data Utilization (NDU) program is to accelerate NF research and drug discovery by encouraging the reuse of data from the NF Data Portal to identify novel disease pathways, therapeutic targets, and biomarkers. Proposals should be concise and focused on generating key preliminary data that can rapidly advance to the next stage of validation. Priority will be given to projects focused on identifying targets in cutaneous neurofibromas and non-NF2 schwannomatosis, as well as those exploring active pathways and biomarkers related to pain in schwannomatosis and neurobehavioral manifestations in NF1.

Eligibility

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