Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining today. My name is Amy Bunker, and I will be speaking for the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program today and telling you about some of the funding opportunities that will be of interest to you. As you can see from the slide, I am not actually Donna Kimbark, who was unable to attend today. So instead, I will be presenting on her behalf. I have been a science officer for the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program for about six years now. Before that, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, where I did research on a systems biology project involving studying how p53 regulated gene transcription. And prior to my postdoctoral fellow, I earned my PhD from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in pharmaceutical sciences. So how we'll go today is I will go through the presentation. Please feel free to enter questions in the Q&A, and I will get to those at the end and address any other questions that may come up while we're discussing those. So please don't be shy. And without further ado, I will get started. So who is the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs? So CDMRP, as I'll refer to us as the rest of the presentation, we fall under the Department of Defense. And this is our chain of command. And essentially, we manage about $2 billion worth of biomedical research grants on behalf of the DoD and the US Army Medical Research and Development Command each year. Our vision is to transform the health care for service members and the American public through innovative and impactful research. We do this by responsibly managing collaborative research that discovers, develops, and delivers health care solutions for service members, veterans, and the American public. The PRCRP in particular is one of about 30 programs that fall under the office of CDMRP. Every year, we are tasked by Congress to invest to advance mission readiness of US military members affected by cancer and to improve their quality of life by decreasing the burden of cancer on service members, their families, and the American public. And as a program, we do this by successfully promoting high-impact research for cancer prevention, detection, treatment, quality of life, and survivorship. PRCRP is a little unique from some of the other programs at CDMRP in that Congress tasks us each year to invest in specific topic areas. And you can see depicted in the graph, the number of topic areas has been increasing more or less over the last several years since our inception in FY09. And as we get more topic areas to invest in, we also generally have gotten more funds to invest in those particular topic areas. Congress also specifically directs us that we cannot invest our funds in research into breast, kidney, lung, pancreatic, prostate, ovarian, cancer, or rare cancers, or melanoma. And I'll get into that a little bit more on the next slide. There is also a little side note for the rare cancers, at least, and that the inclusion of the Rare Cancers Research Program shall not prohibit the PRCRP from funding cancers or cancer subtypes that may be rare by definition, but are also covered as the list of PRCRP-funded topic areas. And the other very important thing to our program, and that Congress specifically tasks us to do, is to make sure that our research projects that we invest in are relevant to service members and their families. For FY21, the columns on the left here are telling, are the specific topic areas that we are going to be accepting applications for this year. The topic areas in green are actually new to PRCRP for FY21. And we have $115 million appropriation for this year. That includes the 20 topic areas that are there on the left. And as I mentioned, PRCRP is prohibited from using its funds in the cancers that are listed there on the right in red. And that's because each of those different cancers already has their own research program and a dedicated pool of funds that is being invested into those topic areas. So if PRCRP was to also invest in those, then those different cancer areas essentially would be getting double funded by us. So the purpose of having individual research programs for us at CDMRP. And so it's very important that when you're crafting your applications and submitting them, that you're paying attention to both the topic areas that are included there on the left and the cancer types that are in red on the right. If at any point during the application and review process, excuse me, the review process, we identify that your application contains research in those prohibited topic areas, those cancer types, then those are grounds for administrative withdrawal of your application. So please be aware of that. And that is something we take very seriously. As I mentioned, also very important to us as a program is fulfilling the congressional directive to make sure our funded applications are applicable to our service members and to help investigators and applicants address that need. We have developed two military health focus areas that are written out on the screen here. The first is environmental exposure risk factors associated with cancer. And the second is mission readiness. And what this means first is a little self-explanatory. Mission readiness, maybe not as much, but it's really looking at trying to address if a service member or a family member of a service member is diagnosed with cancer, then that member is frequently pulled out of their units to either receive treatment and heal themselves or to be with family members during this time. And so that affects the unit's readiness and capabilities of carrying out their mission. And so these, you can find more information about what these two focus areas are and how you might be able to address them by reading through the award information section and the program description section of each of our specific funding opportunities. Also important to us and new for FY21, so if you have applied for funding from us in the past, this will be new information for you. We have developed eight overarching challenges that investigators are strongly encouraged to choose one, at least one, and tell us how your research is going to be addressing one of these needs. For us, we've spread them out and divided them across what we call the cancer care spectrum. So for research that starts off at the more basic general biology, etiology of the disease, all the way up through treatment, survivorship, or even developing resources that are needed for each cancer area. So these are not going to go through each of the eight overarching challenges that you can read those later. And also they are described in more detail in each of the funding opportunities as well. So please take note of them and when you're crafting your applications, really try to think of how your application is addressing one of these needs for the topic area that you're applying for. So as you I'm sure noticed and presumed by the fact that I'm here talking to you today, liver cancer is one of the topic areas that is being funded through the PRCRP for FY21. It's been a topic area that we've funded since FY19. We have invested $36.4 million in 68 awards for FY20. We have 38 additional applications that were recommended for funding. They're currently going through award negotiations. So some of those numbers may increase or decrease depending on if anything falls out during negotiations. But as you can see at the top there, we're highlighting some of the most more recently funded, excuse me, liver cancer research from the PRCRP entitled A New Model for Accelerating Liver Disease and Cancer Research. As I'm sure many of you know, one of the most common issues plaguing liver cancer research and therefore the advancement of therapeutics and understanding of the disease is a lack of an animal with similar physiology to how the disease presents and progresses in humans. And so that is what this team has been working on since FY15 and developing an Oncopig model to help bridge this gap. The next few slides, I'll go ahead and talk a little bit about our funding cycle and the funding opportunities and where to find them. So this is the whole picture of our funding cycle. This is common for any program at CDMRP. The fiscal year for us starts when we get the congressional appropriation when the budget is signed. That's our clock starts ticking then. We have an annual vision setting meeting, which is really our investment strategy meeting deciding which funding opportunities are going to be offered that fiscal year to address the gaps and the needs of our program. Shortly after our vision setting meeting, our funding opportunities are released. And so this is where we are in our current funding cycle. And about two, three weeks ago, the PRCRP funding opportunities were in fact released. So the clock is ticking on the application window. After that, after the application submission period closes, then we enter into our pre-application screening if needed. I'll touch on this a little bit more in some of the other slides. And then peer and programmatic review. Again, a little bit unique to CDMRP is that we do have a two-stage review, two-step review process. And again, I'll touch on this a little bit more in later slides. After programmatic review, we get a list of awards and applications that have been recommended for funding. And that starts the negotiation process and the active award period. If you're not familiar with how to find our funding opportunities, you can do so from three different locations. You can go to the CDMRP homepage and you'll see the funding opportunities at the top of the page there. You can go to eBRAC.org and click on the funding opportunities and forms tab. And then you can do a grants.gov search by entering that into the search box. I'll also mention that if you have not already done so, I strongly encourage you to go to the eBRAC and you can go to email subscriptions and sign up to receive notifications for the programs that you're specifically interested in. And that way you'll be put on a list serve and notified for important things like when pre-announcements of funding opportunities are made available and when the funding opportunities themselves are open and accepting applications. Again, strongly recommend you going to eBRAC and signing up for our email subscriptions. Also very important that if you haven't applied to any CDMRP programs in the past is that all of our funding opportunities use a two-step application process. The first is the pre-application and this is submitted through eBRAC. The second is the full application and that is submitted through grants.gov. When you are looking through our funding opportunities, it's important to pay attention to whether the funding opportunity you're looking at requires a pre-proposal or a letter of intent for the pre-application. So what's the difference? A pre-proposal again is submitted through eBRAC and it's a short two-page narrative that gives the high points of what you are, what your full application is going to be. What's the project? What's your idea? What are you going to propose for this project? It can include biosketches and other supporting documents as requested in the funding opportunities. It'll be spelled out in the funding opportunity. And pre-proposals do get reviewed. These are reviewed by our programmatic panel and from the pool of pre-application, pre-proposals, excuse me, from the pool of pre-proposals that we receive, the programmatic panel then decides which ones to, which investigators to offer an invitation to submit a full application. If you are applying to a funding opportunity that has a pre-proposal and you do not get an invitation to submit the full application, then you will not be eligible to do so. You must receive that invitation in order to submit a full application. If however, the funding opportunity you're applying to only requires a letter of intent, this is a much simpler process. You still submit the letter of intent through e-PREP, but it's literally just a letter saying that, hey, I'm going to submit an application for this funding opportunity. These are not reviewed and they're just used for administrative purposes, such as helping us get an early start on peer reviewer recruitment. So pre-proposals, if they're required, then you must get an invitation to submit a full application. Letter of intent, they are not reviewed, but they are still required. So you don't have to be invited to submit a full application. However, if you miss the deadline to submit your letter of intent, then you will no longer be eligible to submit the full application. The next several slides, I'm going to talk a little, give a little highlights of the key aspects of our FY21 funding opportunities that we have to offer. So the first one I'm going to talk about is our IDEA Award. This is one of the funding opportunities that does require a pre-proposal. So you must submit the pre-proposal, it will be reviewed, and then you must receive an invitation before you submit your full application. All researchers, faculty level appointments are eligible. And the main intent of this opportunity is to fund highly innovative, high risk, high gain types of research. I can't say this enough, the emphasis is on innovation. This is not meant to be a continuity of science. This is not supposed to be something like an R01. This is, if you're familiar with NIH mechanisms, it's more similar in many ways to an R21. So you don't have to give any preliminary data, it's not required. However, if you do put preliminary data in your application, then that is fair game for reviewers to critique. The direct costs are $500,000 up to three years. And again, the innovation is really the key point for this. The onus is on you as the investigator to really tell us and argue your case as to why your project is innovative, and not just an incremental advance of ongoing research in your lab. As I mentioned, if you include preliminary data, it can be evaluated, it will be evaluated, and that you're, again, encouraged to pay attention to the FY21 overarching challenges in your impact statement. So the impact statement is a separate statement that will be required as part of your submission, separate from the project narrative. So make sure that you're addressing the overarching challenges in your impact statement. And again, pay attention to and put some effort and thought into the military health focus areas. This is something that our program does pay a lot of attention to, and that our reviewers are looking out for. And these are competitive grants. And so I have seen where if we have two equally well-scoring peer-reviewed applications, and someone puts more thought and more preparation into their military health statement, then it's likely that that application will be given the nod over the one that maybe just phoned it in or didn't put as much thought and care into the military health focus area. And honestly, this key point doesn't come up in all the rest of the slides, but it can be equally important for each of our funding opportunities. So just keep that in mind as you're putting your application materials together. The next funding opportunity that we have is the impact award. Once again, this is another funding opportunity that requires a pre-proposal. So you must be invited to submit a full application. These are for assistant professors or above. And this is really meant to be that continuity of research funding opportunity. So you are required to have preliminary data for these applications, and you have to demonstrate how this research, how this application that you're proposing will have a near-term impact on the field. And by near-term, we're talking about five years. So if this project is successful, within the next five years, how would it have an immediate, how would it have an impact on liver cancer patients, treatment options, whatever, as long as you're addressing one of those overarching challenges. How will that be impacting the field? This funding opportunity does support the costs of clinical trials. It is $1.25 million over a period of performance of up to three years. And the key points for a successful application here, once again, are being able to articulate how this project, if successful, project, if successful, would be impactful, and justifying how it applies to one of our FY21 overarching challenges. And to the end of that continuity of research, one of the requirements of this funding opportunity is submitting a research outcomes plan. And so as in this document, this is part of the application, it's really about thinking ahead and really, okay, again, if this project is successful, articulating to us where you see the project and this research going, and why is it distinct? Why should we care? The next funding opportunity is our Translational Team Science Award. If you happen to be familiar with this award mechanism, you'll note that this year is the first year where it is only a letter of intent and not actually a pre-proposal. So no invitation is required. You just submit your letter of intent and then submit your full application. This is for two to three investigators. And these both or all three investigators really should have a intellectual stake in the project. If what it's not meant to be is a research scientist getting samples from an MD and the only stake the MD has on that project as a partner is supplying those samples, that it should be really clearly demonstrated that both or all three partners are contributing equally or significantly to the proposed research. It is meant to support hypothesis driven correlative studies that are associated with an ongoing or completed clinical trial. So really trying to get that bedside back to bench, back to bedside translational aspects covered. This funding opportunity will support clinical trial costs. However, that's not really, again, the intent. We really want the focus to be on the translational aspects of the project. But if there's a cause for it, then yes, clinical trial costs are supported. This is for $2.5 million total amongst all partners. And it's for a period of performance of up to four years. Again, the key points of success are to show us how all investigators are invested in the success of the project, the translational aspects of the project. So how is it going to inform the clinic if the project is successful? Once again, being sure that you're addressing one of our FY21 overarching challenges. And this funding opportunity does also require a research outcomes plan. So if successful, what would the next steps be in order to get this idea, this research to impacting either patient lives or at least advancing the field? For FY21, we also have the Behavioral Health Science Award. This will be the second year that we're offering this mechanism. Once again, it is just a letter of intent. There is no invitation to submit a full application. These are for independent investigators with faculty level appointment or equivalent. And it's really meant to address the three stages of survivorship. These are listed briefly over here on the right-hand side of the column, but these are acute, extended and permanent survivorship. So what's being a cancer patient, being a cancer survivor, it's not just being diagnosed and treated, but there's all other types of mental aspects and physical aspects that deal with severity of certain treatments and so on. And so that's really what we're trying to get to and address with the Behavioral Health Science Award. Again, this award will support some pilot clinical trial costs. You'll have to read the award information section of the funding opportunity, but only three out of the eight FY21 overarching challenges are applicable to this award mechanism, this funding opportunity. And preliminary data are required for all applications that are proposing a pilot clinical trial. These awards are for $1 million in direct costs for a period of performance of up to four years. And some of the key points for this, again, the impact really being able to convey to us how this application will help change the lives of patients with cancer beyond just getting treated. Unique aspect for this funding opportunity is that it does require the involvement of patient advocates in the proposal writing and also the conducting of the research. And so when you're reaching out and incorporating the patient advocates into the project, it's very important that they are advocates for the cancer that is being proposed. So if you're submitting a liver cancer behavioral health science application, then the patient advocates that are part of that proposal should be liver cancer patient advocates. And last but not least, we have our FY21 Career Development Award, a fellow, the fellow option. So as with the last few funding opportunities, this also only requires a letter of intent, no invitation required to submit a full application. These are independent investigators at the level of research assistant professor or instructor or the equivalent that are within seven years of completing their terminal degree. Postdoctoral fellows are not eligible to apply for this. The associated career guide must be an associate professor or higher. And the research application should really demonstrate impactful research. These are for 400,000 indirect costs over a period of three years. And the applicant must be able to commit 50% of their time to cancer research. It doesn't have to be specific 50% effort on this specific project, but it must be 50% of their effort in cancer research. Some key points for this funding opportunity is, again, being able to articulate the impact of the research, making sure that the applicant is addressing one of the FY21 overarching challenges, and in the career development plan, really being able to show the involvement of the career guide, being able to demonstrate a logical progression of where the applicant is now to where they want to be and how this funding will help them get there. Milestones that the applicant expects to achieve, how they're going to enhance their networking and collaboration opportunities, and any workshop training, et cetera, that would be beneficial to their development as a faculty member. And going to end on the next several slides about just how to read and navigate through our funding opportunities. On the first page, we have just basic award information, so the program information at the top, the funding opportunity, and then you will want to pay very careful attention to the submission and review dates, particularly the submission deadlines. These, with very, very rare exceptions, are set in stone. And by rare exceptions, I mean if there's a natural disaster affecting like a hurricane's hit Houston a week before the funding deadline, then in those cases, we have in the past pushed back the deadlines to help out with those kinds of things. But otherwise, these are pretty much set in stone. And again, if you miss a pre-application deadline, so either submitting your pre-proposal or your letter of intent, then you will not be able to submit, no matter what, a full application. And table of contents. So, excuse me, and accompanying all of our program announcements is also a general application instructions. So the general application instructions are just that. They're not specific to any one funding opportunity, and they just provide more detailed information about what the different forms and attachments, the type of information that they should contain. And there is a lot of information between these two documents, but it really is important that you read both of them through carefully. And there is very important information that if you don't read it, if you don't read it, you will be possibly hindering the success of your application. As I mentioned, the first part of our review process is a peer review. And so this is really a review of your application held to a golden standard. So in each of our funding opportunities, the peer review criteria are listed in the funding opportunity. And it's really best idea if you use that as a rubric for how you're crafting your application. So the peer reviewers are looking at the technical merit based on an ideal application. And as I mentioned, it's criteria-based. That criteria is spelled out for the applicants in the funding opportunity. Peer reviewers themselves are scientific, medical, and consumer reviewers. So this particular aspect here, consumer reviewers, this is a hallmark of all CDMRP programs in that we have patient advocates that are part of our programmatic panel. They help set our vision each year. They participate in our review panel, our peer review panels. So many of our applications require either an impact statement or an innovation statement. Like I mentioned, there's going to be a military health focus area statement. And so our consumers are reading all of those statements and giving inputs on those. So that's another reason for you to make sure that you would really put thought and effort into addressing the needs of those particular statements. We do not have standing panels. And the reviewers are recruited based on the needs for that given year. And you will not know the identities of the reviewers. So there is no interaction between the applicants and the reviewers. The outcome of peer review is a summary statement that has the scores and summaries of weaknesses and strengths of all of the applications. Here is an example of the peer review criteria. And so this is for a research strategy and feasibility criteria. And when you are drafting your narrative, and if this were the peer review criteria for the funding opportunity that you were applying for, you would need to make sure that you're addressing each of these points thoroughly in your application. And so this is basically, as I said, use this as a rubric for, this is what peer reviewers are going to be looking for. And so that's what you need to make sure you address in your applications. Our second tier of review is what we call programmatic review. And at this stage, it is a separate panel from the peer review panels. And for example, for peer CRP, we have representatives that from all of the different funding areas that we are funding that year. So we have liver cancer experts, we have colorectal cancer experts, and so on and so forth. And these also are both scientists and consumer reviewers. And this really is a comparison based aspect of the review process. So they receive all of the summary statements from peer review, and then the different statements from the proposal. And they're really looking to see how well the applicants addressed the intent of that particular mechanism. And so when I say the intent of the mechanism, each of the funding opportunities has a section called the award information. And in that section, that's telling our applicants, this is what this funding opportunity is trying to achieve. And so when you're selecting a funding opportunity to apply to, and then creating your application, make sure that all of your documents, again, go back to filling the need of that particular funding opportunity. And this last bullet point here, portfolio composition, again, is a particular importance for the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program, because we do fund, we do cover so many different topic areas. I believe I said 20 at the beginning of this talk. And so our programmatic reviewers really work to make sure that we are covering as many of those topic areas as we can, based on the number of submissions that we receive. And so the reviewers, as I said, consumers, clinicians, researchers, as needed, we'll bring on ad hoc members. And the outcome of this meeting is our list of applications that are recommended for funding. It's very important that as you're preparing your application, and you're getting letters and finding collaborators and career guides and so on and so forth, that you do not have any of our current panel members listed on your application. This would be grounds for administrative withdrawal of your application. And here, all of our funding opportunities also do list the criteria for programmatic review. As I mentioned, this is where the programmatic reviewers are going to be looking at how well the military health focus areas are addressed. They're going to be looking at how well the overarching challenges are addressed. And so when you're, again, writing those sections of the application, don't phone it in. They will be read, they will be read by themselves. So don't just think, oh, I addressed that in my narrative. Make sure that the important parts of these statements are also very clearly articulated in the individual statements for those. Coming down to the home stretch. So just to kind of recap some of the strategies for success. Plan ahead, like I said, pay attention to those dates, set calendar reminders, whatever you need to do. The deadlines are important. If you need to find collaborators, you need to work with your career guides, pull together a few partners for a translational team science, whatever it may be. Make sure that you get that coordination going as soon as you can to get your team together and get everyone on the same page and moving forward in a unified manner. Grantsmanship, it's fun to think of this as kind of like a TED talk. So state your idea up front and then back it up. And if for the important concepts, don't, you know, a little repetition never hurts. And before you submit your documents, please make sure you review them. Use the verification period, important. When you are choosing which funding opportunities to apply for and are reading through the material, what is the intent? Pay attention again to that award information section in particular, what's the intent of that funding opportunity and how is what you're proposing to do meet that intent. Impact, there's a lot of cool science out there. A lot of people are doing very interesting things, but really what we need, we really try to find and fund the most impactful science. So even if it's basic, you know, if you're still doing some of that early biology, etiology type of research, tell us how that is going to be impactful for the field. And always try to relate that back to importance to patients. And finally, feasibility, clearly define your team's skills and how you are capable of carrying out the proposed work. And how you can achieve the anticipated out. Things that you wanna definitely make sure you avoid doing. I mentioned, do not put and do not name programmatic panel members from the current fiscal year. So the FY21 panel members are on the PRCRP website. I'll give you that link at the last slide. They cannot be in your application. Do not exceed page limits. Once, if you're converting everything to PDF, make sure everything's converting the same way. So check to make sure that you haven't accidentally exceeded any page limits in that conversion. And as you can tell, this is an important one. I've said it a few times. Don't miss the submission deadlines. The grants.gov validation can take up to 72 hours. Sometimes system to system submissions are problematic. And so application verification in eBRAP is possible before the deadline, but please note that you must submit the correct project narrative and budget at the deadline. These documents cannot be modified during the verification period in eBRAP. If you realize you uploaded the wrong bio sketch or whatever, those kinds of things can be fixed. But the project narrative and the budget, once they're submitted, they cannot be changed. And the deadline has passed, they can't be changed. So for FY21, I'm not going to sit here and read through all of these dates. You'll have access to these slides after today. But yes, again, the deadlines for the pre-applications for the idea and impact award. Again, these two particular funding opportunities require pre-proposals. So pay attention to those submission deadlines. They're coming up. The pre-applications are due May 20th. The other mechanisms, the other funding opportunities for FY21, they all require a letter of intent. And the letter of intent are due not until July 29th. So again, read carefully the dates for the particular funding opportunities that you're interested in, because as you can see, there are minor differences depending on the requirements of the review process. So to end our talk today, this is the PRCRP website. You can find on PRCRP websites, lists of recently funded investigators. You can find the current list of FY21 programmatic panel members. You can find what we call information papers. And these give applicants a little bit more information about the number of applications that were received the previous year across the different topic areas and across the different funding opportunities. So you can see the funding rates and get an idea of what we've had historically. Again, those are from the previous year. Those numbers are always subject to change a little bit from one year to the next, depending on the receipt that we get across the different topic areas and number of funding opportunities that we offer. Another, if you want more information about CDMRP in general, or our two-tiered review process of peer and programmatic review, then I encourage you to review our CDMRP overview page. And last but not least, we do have a series of prerecorded webinars that go into a little bit more information of walking you through individual funding opportunities and the specific sections that you find there, some of which was covered today, but a lot of it would also be new. So I encourage you to go check out the webinar series as well. So with that, I will go and see, again, if you have any questions, go ahead and put them in the Q&A box. And we'll take it from there. Hey, this is Dominique. So I do not see any questions in the Q&A box, but I do have one question for you. If they are interested in wanting to reach out for more information, is there a point of contact that they can reach out to, or would they just visit the overview page? So they can go to the eBRAP website, and there is information on the eBRAP site for their help desk. And so if they have any questions, they can submit them there. And if it's of a specific nature, then those will filter to Donna. If they're more general nature, then the help desk would be able to assist them. Great, thank you. I'll just make one more appeal. If anyone else has any questions, please feel free to drop them in the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. And yeah, and I would just reiterate that reading through the funding opportunities carefully at least one time is really very important, and to make sure that if we're asking for an impact statement or an innovation statement, et cetera, that you pay attention and craft those with care, because those aren't just throwaway statements, they do get used and incorporated throughout the review process. So I have seen, again, these are competitive applications, and so two applications that may be scored equally well on the summary statements, if one has a stronger impact statement or a stronger military health statement, then that's probably going to be the one that gets the nod over the equally scientifically meritorious project that maybe didn't put as much care and attention to those statements. So that's something that I think is a little bit unique to CDMRP and PRCRP. So I just want to make sure that that really gets across. So that's all that we have for today. Thank you so much for joining us and have a great afternoon or a great evening. Thank you.

Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program

funding opportunities

cancer research

healthcare transformation

military members

cancer prevention

quality of life

FY21 funding