DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research, Translational Team Science Award | W81XWH 20 PRCRP TTSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 20 PRCRP TTSA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) Translational Team Science Award (TTSA), funding opportunity number W81XWH-20-PRCRP-TTSA, is a Fiscal Year 2020 Department of Defense grant/cooperative agreement mechanism administered through the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). It is designed to push promising cancer research findings closer to real-world clinical use by supporting hypothesis-driven translational studies that are explicitly tied to a clinical trial, either one that is ongoing or one that has already been completed. The central expectation is that the proposed work will directly inform a next-phase clinical trial or enable a future clinical application, rather than stopping at basic discovery or early feasibility work.

A defining feature of this award is its emphasis on team-based, multidisciplinary, multi-investigator translational science. While the mechanism can include funding for clinical trials, it is not meant to function as a stand-alone clinical trial funding source. Instead, it supports broader clinical research efforts carried out by coordinated teams, where the clinical trial connection is used as an anchor to validate, refine, and translate prior clinical observations. Competitive projects are expected to tackle meaningful clinical problems such as filling critical knowledge gaps in clinical outcomes, validating key research results that need confirmation before wider adoption, expanding findings that may be potentially game-changing, or investigating novel clinical observations that emerged from patient care or clinical studies.

For FY20, the program strongly encourages (but does not strictly require) alignment with two Areas of Emphasis: interventions that improve quality of life for cancer patients and/or survivors, and cancer prevention or early detection. Applications that do not fall within these emphasis areas are still eligible, but they must make a clear and persuasive case that, once translated into clinical practice, the work will have a lasting and substantial impact in the relevant research area. In other words, the program is open to a wider range of cancer topics, but applicants outside the highlighted areas carry a higher burden to demonstrate durable clinical significance and relevance to PRCRP priorities.

In terms of permissible research approaches, the TTSA can support studies involving animal models, human subjects, and human anatomical substances (such as biospecimens), as long as the work is meaningfully connected to a clinical trial and advances a translational objective. Relevant preclinical models may be included when they are clearly used to bridge clinical findings to next-step testing or implementation. At the same time, the opportunity specifically signals that it is not intended to fund projects centered on high-throughput screening or large-scale sequencing efforts as the primary thrust, reflecting a preference for focused, clinically anchored translational questions over broad discovery-style profiling activities.

The opportunity also points applicants to the work of a Congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force, which was established to identify ways to accelerate clinical and translational research aimed at extending the lives of patients with advanced-stage and recurrent cancers. As part of that broader effort, the CDMRP encourages applicants to review the Task Force recommendations and consider proposing projects that address those recommendations, provided the ideas still fit within the TTSA’s scope and the FY20 PRCRP priorities. This signals interest in impactful translational strategies for metastatic disease, especially those that can move efficiently from clinical insights to improved outcomes.

Administratively, the announcement lists the opportunity as discretionary funding within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category (CFDA 12.420), open to unrestricted applicant types subject to any additional eligibility clarifications in the full announcement. The posting indicates an expected eight awards, with an original application closing date of August 27, 2020, and a creation date of March 23, 2020. The award ceiling is shown as 0 in the source data, which typically means applicants must refer to the full funding announcement for the actual budget limits or that ceilings are handled in a manner not captured in that specific field.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research, Translational Team Science Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 23, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 27, 2020. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 8 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 20 PRCRP TTSA

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