Last year, tissue bioengineer Jeffrey Borenstein decided to pursue a long-incubating idea. He wanted to create an artificial lung that that could work for months on end without recipients having to take blood-thinning drugs like they do with existing models. None of his existing grants included funding to cover this project. And with little preliminary data to show for his fledgling idea, he figured he didn’t stand much of a chance at securing an R01 grant, the most widely used funding vehicle at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for specific research projects.

So Borenstein, director of the biomedical engineering center at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, applied for an R21 grant, which provides transitionary funding for researchers with little initial data to explore high-risk, high-reward projects. The grant only provides up to $275,000 over two years, but the idea is that investigators are then in a better position to secure much more lucrative R01 funding.

The US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) funded Borenstein’s grant in November to the tune of $260,000. On the basis of previous funding, he reported in April how microfluidic technologies enable high levels of gas exchange in a densely packed structure—a far more efficient method than the current bulky mechanical ventilators (Biomed. Microdevices 13, 315–23, 2011). With the R21 grant, he is now developing strategies for lining the microscopic vessels with endothelial cells to reduce the common problem of blood clots on artificial surfaces.

“Our goal is to use this new technology platform for a host of artificial organ applications,” Borenstein says.

Had he waited much longer to apply, however, Borenstein might never have received the funding, because on 12 July the NHLBI announced that the institute would no longer accept unsolicited R21 grant applications after October because the funding was not serving its intended purpose.

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