The Project Summary/Abstract (called abstract from here forward) gives you 30 lines of text to provide an overview of your proposal. The NIH helpfully provides a clear set of requirements for what to include in the SF424 R&R guide. The abstract should touch on all the major components of your grant proposal, and explicitly address the NIH’s 3 Factor Review Framework: Factor 1. Importance of the Research, Factor 2. Rigor and Feasibility, and Factor 3. Expertise and Resources, and contain text that will route it to your desired study section and institute. Read more about the new framework here.

Determining Agency and Study Section Priorities

The abstract, along with the title, are what determine which study section and funding agency assesses your proposal. Therefore, it is important to both understand what the priorities of these groups are and to make sure you use words that will route your application where you want it to go. You can find a list of NIH institutes here and study sections here. Funding priorities are almost always explicitly stated. For example, if you want your application to be reviewed by SMEP (Skeletal Muscle and Exercise Physiology Study Section) and the NIA, including phrases such as “physiological evaluation of skeletal muscle gene function” and making sure to emphasize “muscle-specific proteins” would help route your grant to this study section. Emphasizing the relevance of your research to aging will help ensure NIA sees the proposal, and not, for example NIAMS. You should also look at any related study sections (bottom of the page describing an individual study section), and if you specifically don’t want your proposal to go to one of these sections, you should be sure to exclude keywords that those study sections emphasize from your proposal. 

RePORTER

The NIH compiles a searchable database of all funded research called RePORTER. The advanced search function allows for sorting and filtering by agency, date, funding mechanism, keywords, and other features that allow you to get a sense of what types of proposals have been recently funded in your area of interest.

ART - Assisted Referral Tool

The NIH also has an AI tool called ART that takes the abstract text you provide and predicts which study section it will most likely be assigned. This is an excellent way to check if the phrasing you are using is targeting your abstract as intended. If ART returns an unexpected result, look both at the study section you are aiming for and the incorrect one with the goal of understanding what terms drove the incorrect assignment. Then try replacing that phrasing with text that aligns with the correct study section, and run the ART again.

Addressing Review Criteria 

The NIH has generalized review criteria for all applications, criteria for specific funding mechanisms, and often, criteria for proposals responding to individual NOFOs. Your abstract needs to address all of these components clearly and succinctly. Below I use 2 abstracts (one and two) I found by querying RePORTER as successful examples. Both are abstracts from NIA-funded R01 grants reviewed by the SMEP study section.

Targeting NIA

Both abstracts contain text explicitly stating their relevance to aging and to the NIA’s funding priorities within the first two sentences of the abstract, and again at the abstract’s conclusion. Both are responsive to NIA’s Goal A, to better understand the biology of aging and its impact on the prevention, progression, and prognosis of disease and disability. The Ser/Gly abstract proposes to do this by understanding how specific amino acids impact muscle regeneration during aging, explicitly describing muscle regeneration as a biological process impacted by aging and contextualizing promoting muscle regeneration as a way of preventing disability. The E2 abstract similarly places its proposed research in the context of aging muscle regeneration. Notably both abstracts also touch on a second NIA goal. The Ser/Gly abstract does this by contextualizing its outcomes as necessary preliminary data for a future intervention to promote muscle regeneration, which matches Goal C: Develop effective interventions to maintain health, well-being, and function and prevent or reduce the burden of age-related diseases, disorders, and disabilities. By contrast, by focusing on aging women and noting that women spend the majority of their lives in an E2 deficient state, the E2 abstract targets Goal F: Understand health disparities related to aging and develop strategies to improve the health status of older adults in diverse populations.

Targeting SMEP

Both abstracts also include text that guides them to the SMEP study section, each hitting multiple topics of interest to SMEP. This includes a focus on satellite and/or progenitor cells (first column, second bullet), skeletal muscle aging (first column, third bullet), and skeletal muscle regeneration (first column, third bullet). The Ser/Gly abstract also emphasizes nutrition (first column, third bullet). Notably, by emphasizing molecular and cellular mechanisms and basic biology, both abstracts are written to emphasize the interests of SMEP over the interests of the MRS and ASG study sections, and the Ser/Gly abstract avoids NMHD by not mentioning a study of muscle physiology as an outcome of their study.

The NOFO

Both example abstracts were submitted in response to standard R01 NOFOs, as opposed to specific funding calls. The NIH will routinely put out calls for very targeted grants that use a common activity code, for example an R01 grant. These are opportunities to submit projects that are very specific responses to the targeted funding call. An example of this would be RFA-DA-25-074. If you are writing an abstract for a proposal submitted to one of these opportunities, you should use the exact language from the NOFO in your abstract, and state explicitly which of the “areas of research interest” your application is relevant to. This is not a time for subtlety. Also, verify that your abstract (and proposal) do not include any of the topics the NIH notes as “non-responsive”. The NIH is asking for a specific type of research program, and your job with your abstract is to demonstrate that your research matches what the NIH wants.

The Simplified Framework

Both abstracts address all 3 Factors of the NIH’s Simplified Framework. 

Factor 1. Importance of the Research

The first factor addresses significance and innovation. The significance should align with the priorities of the funding agency and study section, and clearly identify the problem that your proposal addresses, define its scope and impact on society (human costs, financial impact, etc). You should do this at two levels, first at a broad level relevant to the funding agency and study section (in this example NIA and SMEP) and then at a proposal specific level that conveys why your research proposal will make a significant impact on the broader area defined. How our example abstracts achieve this at the broad level has already been discussed above, so here I’ll focus on how each abstract does this at the project level. 

The Ser/Gly abstract establishes significance by noting that Ser/Gly are required for proper progenitor cell function in muscle regeneration, and noting that levels decline with aging. The authors then contextualizing the focus of their study, understanding the impact of Ser/Gly on progenitor cell function, muscle regeneration, and the muscle tissue environment, as critical unresolved questions, such that the reader is left thinking that a full understanding of muscle function in aging is impossible without understanding the role of Ser/Gly. The E2 abstract is structured similarly, describing the lack of a mechanistic understanding of the role of E2 in skeletal muscle and contextualizing it as a key regulatory factor.

Both abstracts also explicitly address significance of the completion of the project in their concluding sentences. The E2 abstract achieves this by linking the specific knowledge gained via their aims, stating “At the completion of this project we will know in molecular detail how E2 contributes to overall skeletal muscle health through hormone receptor mediated-mechanisms specifically in satellite cells” and then linking this to human health. The Ser/Gly abstract takes a different approach, placing their data as essential preclinical work for an eventual human interventional study.

Both abstracts also address innovation. Innovation can take a variety of forms, though it is common to touch on both scientific innovations (this often overlaps with the significance) and technological innovations. Here the Ser/Gly abstract calls out their inclusion of “novel sphingolipidome profiling and transcriptomics”, while the E2 abstract notes that in each aim they “utilize state of the art transcriptional and chromatin profiling approaches”. While it can seem heavy-handed, the practice of using keywords like “novel”, “state of the art”, “innovative”, “for the first time”, etc are essential for clearly establishing innovation succinctly. 

Factor 2. Rigor and Feasibility

Factor 2 is where you have the opportunity to show that your plan is scientifically sound (approach and rigor) and that, with the grant, you will have what you need to complete your proposed aims (feasibility).  The common way to do this in the abstract is to state a central hypothesis, provide essential preliminary data and background research to show that the hypothesis is viable, and then describe aims that test the hypothesis in different ways, noting your capacity to achieve all aims proposed.

Both of our example abstracts have all these components, though they are structured differently. The Ser/Gly abstract begins its Rigor and Feasibility with a discussion of what they “previously demonstrated”, which establishes feasibility while setting up their current aims. Within each aim, they state what they are testing, how they will test it (approach), and the validity of their approach (rigor). As an example “using models [approach] that we have demonstrated reduce (depleted diet) or enhance (supplemented diet) endogenous Ser/Gly levels [rigor, feasibility], we will quantify the effects of Ser/Gly availability on age- and injury-related muscle regeneration and the cell (MPC)-extrinsic muscle environment [approach].” They then relate the outcome of these aims to their hypothesis, explicitly calling out the hypothesis with the phrasing “we hypothesize” , and then stating the anticipated results of their aims, establishing the relevance of their approach.

The E2 abstract flips this organization, opening with a clear statement of hypothesis backed by preliminary data “driven by our robust preliminary data [feasibility, rigor], we will test the overarching hypothesis that E2 is the primary sex hormone regulating skeletal muscle maintenance through estrogen receptor-mediated mechanisms in satellite cells [approach]”. The abstract then details their approach in each aim, and describes their outcomes at the conclusion of their description of aims.

Factor 3: Expertise and Resources

This factor is a more minor component of the abstract, as the supporting documents of the grant proposal are where expertise and resources will be fully evaluated. However it is possible to address Factor 3 in the abstract, as both of our example abstracts have done through their explicit mentions of preliminary data. The existence of this data implies that the researchers have the expertise to initiate the project, and that they know what resources are necessary to complete all aims. 

Formatting

While the bulk of this post emphasizes content, it would be an error to not touch on abstract formatting and compliance. The NIH specifies that that abstract be less than or equal to 30 lines of text. Yes you should count the lines of text on the final version of your submission to make sure that it is no more than 30, and verify that the process of converting your text document to a pdf does not change the length. While length is the only specified requirement, most people will submit an abstract that is either 1 or 2 paragraphs in length, and is either exactly or very close to 30 lines long.