DoD Kidney Cancer, Translational Research Partnership Award | HT942524KCRPTRPA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT942524KCRPTRPA

The FY24 DoD Kidney Cancer Research Program (KCRP) Translational Research Partnership Award is a grant opportunity designed to speed up progress on kidney cancer by funding tightly integrated collaborations between the clinic and the laboratory. The goal is to move promising ideas toward practical clinical use, especially work that could matter for active-duty Service Members, Veterans, and the broader public. The program is specifically looking for translational projects where the scientific and clinical sides continually inform each other, rather than a simple one-direction pipeline from bench to bedside.

A core requirement is that the application be built around a true partnership between at least two independent, faculty-level (or equivalent) investigators. One partner must be a research scientist and the other must be a clinician, and the proposal needs to make it obvious that both investigators contributed equally to shaping the research question, study design, and overall approach. Projects where the clinician is mainly providing patient access or tissue samples are explicitly not considered responsive to the intent of the award. Multi-institutional teams are encouraged, and the program also welcomes collaborators from outside the kidney cancer field if their expertise strengthens the project. At least one member of the partnership must bring real experience in kidney cancer research or kidney cancer patient care.

The research supported here must be translational in a practical sense. The application should show a reciprocal flow of ideas and information between basic and clinical science, which can mean bench-to-bedside, bedside-to-bench, or both. Acceptable translational approaches can include correlative studies and the development or use of annotated biorepositories, as long as the clinical information is being leveraged to close knowledge gaps, validate key findings, build on potentially transformative results, and/or explore new observations that could change how kidney cancer is understood or managed. The overall emphasis is on work with clear potential to accelerate advances in prevention, diagnosis, detection, prognosis, treatment, and/or survivorship. Clinical trials are not allowed under this mechanism, but clinical research is allowed, including observational studies involving human subjects, human data, and human specimens, as long as the study is not prospectively assigning subjects to interventions to measure intervention outcomes.

Feasibility is treated as a major review consideration. Applicants must include preliminary data that support both the central hypothesis and the proposed approaches. Importantly, those preliminary data do not have to come from kidney cancer specifically, as long as they credibly demonstrate feasibility for what is being proposed. Teams also need to show they have access to the required specimens, cohorts, datasets, and other resources. If the project includes correlative studies tied to an ongoing or completed clinical trial, the team must confirm access to the relevant specimens and/or data at the time of submission through appropriate documentation (for example, letters confirming access).

Because this award is built around collaboration, the application must spell out how the partnership will function in practice. That includes clear plans for how the PIs and participating institutions will communicate, coordinate work, share results, and transfer data. For multi-institutional efforts, an intellectual property plan is required to address intellectual and material property issues and to prevent institutional barriers from undermining cooperation. Administratively, the award uses a multi-PI structure: one investigator is designated as the Initiating PI and typically handles most submission-related tasks, while the other(s) serve as Partnering PI(s). If funded, each PI is named on a separate award issued to their organization, and each award carries its own reporting and compliance responsibilities.

The opportunity also highlights several broader Department of Defense research emphasis areas that applicants may choose to address when relevant. These include nuclear medicine approaches that could improve noninvasive diagnosis, precision imaging, and targeted therapies; womens health, including attention to sex as a biological variable and conditions that affect women differently; and alignment with recommendations from the congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force aimed at accelerating progress for advanced and recurrent disease. The program also stresses rigorous study design and transparent reporting practices that improve reproducibility and translational value, emphasizing principles like randomization, blinding, appropriate sample size estimation, and clear data handling procedures when applicable. Collaborations that involve the military services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, other federal agencies, academia, or industry are encouraged, particularly when they provide access to unique populations, infrastructure, or data resources; if unique resources are needed, access must be described and maintained through the project period.

From a funding and logistics standpoint, awards are made as grants. The anticipated combined direct costs for the full period of performance are capped at $800,000. The Army (USAMRAA) expects to allocate about $7.68 million total to support roughly six awards. The original application closing date listed is October 15, 2024. Awards supported with FY24 funds are expected to be made no later than September 30, 2025, and the FY24 funds associated with resulting awards are anticipated to remain available for use through September 30, 2030, subject to standard federal funding rules and the availability of appropriations.

• The Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Kidney Cancer, Translational Research Partnership 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 2024-07-11.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-10-15. (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 6 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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