The Department of Defense/ Department of the Army on April 20, 2022 posted the Grant Notice (W81XWH-22-RCRP-RCDA) titled “DOD Rare Cancers, Resources and Community Development Award” to close on September 30, 2022, with estimated total program funding for $3,840,000.
Major gaps in patient care of rare cancers include lack of communication and dissemination strategies for rare cancer research and clinical findings within communities, and the lack of therapeutics and mechanistic studies to inform treatment development. The lack of research and clinical resources includes information on patient tissues, cell, and tumor models, and the lack of infrastructure for sharing data and other resources.
This funding opportunity’s goal is to develop platforms that can share resources and knowledge pertaining to available models, molecular pathways, and therapeutic approaches to facilitate collaboration along with information sharing among researchers, patients, caregivers, clinicians, and other members of the rare cancers community.
Examples of platforms include but are not limited to the following:
- Building and sharing rare tumor biospecimen repository with clinical annotation
- Databases/banks for centralizing and sharing data for patient registries that can be accessed globally
- Centralizing and sharing research models and molecular data related to genomics/transcriptomics/immune
- Generating a data/reagent/model exchange program where researchers can list resources that they are willing to share and are tagged with indications that may be relevant
- Platform to enable or leverage longitudinal studies of disease natural history and treatment response
- Development of novel methods and systems for collection, sharing, and analysis of data or biospecimens
Applicants should explain the advantage of their approach to developing resources or community versus standard methodologies techniques, or scopes. A clear plan for collaboration and data sharing needs to be demonstrated. It is critical to demonstrate how the outcome of the proposed project can benefit multiple rare cancers.
Go to https://www.grants.gov/custom/printSynopsisDetails.jsp for more information.