Funded-Lab Sales Radar — Who's Funded to Work on X

NIH hands out roughly 60,000 grants a year — each one a public record of a named principal investigator, at a named institution, with a specific budget, working on a specific topic right now. Lab-equipment vendors, CRO business development teams, and academic recruiters build this list by hand today, from journal articles and conference badges.

NIH RePORTER already has all of it — structured, free, no key, no login. This turns "who's funded to work on X" from a research chore into a ranked, contactable lead list.

How it works

Searches NIH's own RePORTER v2 API by topic across project titles, terms, and abstracts, then ranks results by funding tier (award size) and funding freshness (how much runway is left) — a sales-relevant signal, not a research one. A well-funded grant that just started has years of unspent budget; that's the lead worth prioritizing.

Input

{ "topics": ["CRISPR screening"], "fiscalYears": "2025", "activeOnly": true }

Sample output

{
  "matchedTopic": "CRISPR screening",
  "projectNumber": "5P30DK020579-48",
  "piName": "Jane Q. Researcher",
  "institution": "WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY",
  "institutionState": "MO",
  "awardAmount": 473761,
  "fundingTier": "substantial",
  "fundingFreshness": "just_started",
  "fiscalYear": 2025,
  "reporterUrl": "https://reporter.nih.gov/search/results?projectNum=5P30DK020579-48"
}

Typical uses

• Lab-equipment sales prospecting — find labs funded to buy the kind of instrument you sell, before your competitor's rep does.
• CRO business development — surface newly-funded studies that will need contract research services.
• Academic recruiting — find well-funded labs actively hiring in a specific research area.

Pricing

$4.00 / 1,000 results ($0.004 per lead).

⚠️ Read before you act

• Matching is NIH's own full-text search, not a strict keyword filter — skim the abstract excerpt before reaching out. A topic match doesn't guarantee the project is your exact use case.
• Funding tier and freshness are signals, not guarantees. A "major" tier grant with years of runway is a strong lead; verify budget status directly before a high-stakes pitch.
• Only NIH-funded research is covered. NSF, DOE, and private foundation grants are out of scope for this actor.

FAQ

• Do I need an NIH account or API key? No — the RePORTER API is completely free and keyless.
• Can I search multiple topics at once? Yes — each topic in the list runs as a separate search, results merged and deduplicated by project number.
• What does activeOnly do? Restricts results to grants with runway left. Turn it off to include closed-out historical grants too.

Related actors

• Grant/RFP Opportunity Radar — the same "official public database as a lead list" pattern, for federal contract opportunities via SAM.gov.
• SEC EDGAR Filings — another official-data-as-signal actor, for material corporate events instead of research funding.