NIH Parent STTR PA-27-102 Opens FY27 Cycle for University-Spinout Startups

University-spinout founders chasing NIH Small Business Technology Transfer dollars now have a year-long submission window under Parent STTR PA-27-102, posted to Grants.gov listing 359757 on May 28, 2026 with Phase I ceilings around $323,090 and a final closing date of April 5, 2027.

A Year-Long Window for Academic-Partnered Startups

The new omnibus solicitation, formally titled "NIH Small Business Technology Transfer Grant (Parent STTR [R41/R42] Clinical Trial Optional)" and listed at grants.gov/search-results-detail/359757, is the FY27-cycle replacement for the prior PHS Omnibus that STTR applicants have been pulling from for the last two years. It carries a single posted date of May 28, 2026 and a single closing date of April 5, 2027, but the operational reality is three rolling intake cycles inside that envelope: the standard NIH SBIR/STTR receipt dates of September 5, 2026, January 5, 2027, and April 5, 2027.

That cadence matters because most STTR teams confuse the closing date with the only deadline. The April 5 close is the last gate, not the only one. A founder with a clean Phase I package in hand today should be planning toward the September 5, 2026 receipt — that is the first scored review cycle, and the only one with two reissue lanes ahead of it if the first submission misses the payline.

The Difference Between PA-27-100 and PA-27-102

Earlier this month NIH posted the SBIR parent solicitation, PA-27-100, the companion announcement covering Small Business Innovation Research awards (R43/R44). PA-27-102 is its STTR sibling, and the two are not interchangeable. Choosing the wrong mechanism is the single most common application-killer for first-time small business applicants.

The split comes down to who does the science. Under PA-27-100, the small business can perform up to 100% of the funded research on its own, with optional academic subawards. Under PA-27-102, a formal partnership with a nonprofit research institution — a university, a federally funded research center, or a 501(c)(3) research nonprofit — is statutorily required, and the work must be apportioned between the two organizations on a fixed percentage basis.

That makes PA-27-102 the right mechanism for the founder profile that built the underlying IP inside a university lab and then licensed it out, or who is still actively co-developing the technology with a faculty PI. If the small business is genuinely solo and the only academic involvement is a consultant on the SAB, the SBIR parent (PA-27-100) is the cleaner application.

The 40/30 Partnership Math

The work-split rule is concrete. Under STTR, at least 40% of the funded R&D must be performed by the small business concern and at least 30% must be performed by the partnering nonprofit research institution. The remaining 30% is unrestricted — it can sit with either partner or be subcontracted to a third party such as a contract research organization.

Read that as a budget rule before it is a science rule. A Phase I award at the $323,090 ceiling implies roughly $129,000 minimum to the small business, $97,000 minimum to the academic partner, and about $97,000 of flex that smart teams use to fund a specific assay, an animal cohort, or an analytical contract that neither partner can do in-house.

The other piece STTR founders sometimes miss: the Project Director / Principal Investigator does not have to be employed by the small business. Under STTR specifically, the PD/PI can hold a primary appointment at the partnering nonprofit, provided there is a formal commitment to the applicant small business. That is the opposite of SBIR, where the PD/PI must be more than 50% employed by the small business at the time of award. For a founder still finishing a postdoc or a faculty appointment, STTR is the only NIH small business mechanism that lets the academic remain academic and still serve as PI.

Twenty-Five Institutes Behind a Single Application

The participating components on PA-27-102 read like the entire NIH alphabet: NEI, NHLBI, NHGRI, NIA, NIAAA, NIAID, NIAMS, NIBIB, NICHD, NIDCD, NIDCR, NIDDK, NIDA, NIEHS, NIGMS, NIMH, NINDS, NINR, NIMHD, NLM, NCCIH, NCATS, ORIP, NCI, and ORWH. Twenty-five components, all reviewing under one parent solicitation, each enforcing its own payline.

The practical implication is that the IC assignment — driven by the topic of the proposed research and refined through a pre-submission conversation with a program officer — determines almost everything about whether the award gets funded. Paylines vary by an order of magnitude across NIH. A Phase I scored at the 30th percentile is a comfortable fund at NCI, a hard pass at NIAID, and a coin flip at NIBIB depending on the fiscal year. The single most leveraged hour of work in an STTR submission is the program officer call that confirms the right IC, the right study section, and the right framing of clinical-trial-optional versus required.

That last distinction is what makes PA-27-102 specifically "Clinical Trial Optional." A parallel STTR parent covers projects that involve a clinical trial as part of the proposed Phase I or Phase II scope. PA-27-102 covers the much broader space of preclinical, platform-technology, and translational research that may or may not advance into a registrational study during the period of award.

Why the FY27 Reissue Matters After a Year of SBIR Turmoil

The reissue lands in a year the SBIR/STTR community has spent watching the reauthorization clock. Congress reauthorized the SBIR and STTR programs in April 2026 after a short lapse, and NIH updated its budget guidance accordingly. Per current SEED program guidance, the soft Phase I ceiling is approximately $323,090 and the soft Phase II ceiling is approximately $2,153,927, in both cases before topic-specific waivers that allow individual ICs to fund larger projects with prior approval.

Those are guidelines, not statutory caps. Several ICs — NCI and NHLBI most visibly — have routinely funded waivered STTR Phase IIs north of $4 million when the regulatory pathway justifies the cost. The right time to discover that a topic qualifies for a waiver is two months before submission, not two days before.

The FY27 reissue is also the first STTR parent that fully bakes in the post-reauthorization budget ceilings. Teams that priced their Phase I budgets against the prior ceiling near $306,000 should rebuild the budget against the current $323,090 guideline, because review panels notice the discrepancy and program officers will not invite an upward budget revision after submission.

Calendar, Eligibility, and the Fast-Track Lane

A few mechanics worth pinning down before drafting:

• Eligibility. Only U.S. small business concerns as defined by the SBA can apply — fewer than 500 employees, more than 50% U.S.-owned, and operated for profit. The academic partner is a subawardee, not a co-applicant. Foreign components are generally not allowed; unfunded international collaboration is permitted in narrow circumstances and should be cleared with the program officer.
• Cost share. None required. STTR is straight grant funding, no match.
• Fast-Track. PA-27-102 accepts Fast-Track applications, which package Phase I and Phase II into a single submission with a defined go/no-go milestone. Fast-Track is the right call when the Phase I data plan is genuinely a feasibility gate and the Phase II scope is already designed; it is the wrong call when the Phase I results would meaningfully change the Phase II direction.
• Direct-to-Phase-II. STTR R42 applications can be submitted directly to Phase II if the small business can document equivalent Phase I feasibility data from non-SBIR/STTR funding. For university spinouts sitting on years of academic preclinical data, this is often the highest-yield lane.
• Contact. NIH SEED, the office that runs the small business programs, can be reached at SEEDinfo@nih.gov. Use them. The pre-submission program officer conversation is the difference between a fundable score and a discussed-but-not-funded score.

For founders mapping the broader calendar, Granted's running coverage of SBIR and STTR cycles tracks parent solicitations, agency-specific topic calls, and the cross-agency receipt dates that intersect with NIH cycles.

Where to Start This Week

The September 5, 2026 cycle is fourteen weeks out. That is enough runway to draft a competitive Phase I if the partnership agreement, the IP license, and the program officer relationship are already in place — and not enough runway if any of those three pieces are still open.

Founders new to NIH SBIR/STTR who are scoping the right mechanism before committing to a submission cycle can search Granted's active NIH small business solicitations to compare PA-27-102 against IC-specific topic NOFOs, several of which carry different budget caps, different review timelines, and different competitive dynamics than the parent.

The parent is the broadest door into NIH STTR money. For most academic-partnered startups, it is also the right one.