NPF - Foundation research dollars doubled this year

National Psoriasis Foundation
September 2009

Foundation research dollars
doubled this year

The National Psoriasis Foundation's top priority is to find a cure for psoriatic diseases. While no one can say for sure when a cure will be discovered, it will certainly be achieved sooner if we bolster our investment in biomedical research. For this reason, the Foundation's new 5-year strategic plan calls for a 12-fold increase in annual research-grant funding (see graphic below).

In this first year of the strategic plan, the Foundation's $550,000 research investment more than doubles the 2008 figure, making it the largest research outlay in the Foundation's history! This is also the first year that the Foundation will front two different types of research grants. The first grant is called the Discovery Award; it provides $50,000 of research support for one year. This grant is designed to encourage the advancement of promising new investigators and new ideas in psoriatic-disease research. The second grant is called the Psoriatic Arthritis Research Award and provides $200,000 in research support over the course of two years. This award, as the name suggests, promotes research leading to the prevention, treatment or cure of psoriatic arthritis.

Not only is this the first time the Foundation has targeted a grant for psoriatic arthritis, it is also the first research grant funded through collaboration with another nonprofit health-advocacy group, the Arthritis National Research Foundation (ANRF). The ANRF will fund half the grant and partner with the Foundation to recruit scientific peer-reviewers to score and prioritize the applications.