DOD Pancreatic Cancer, Translational Research Partnership Award | HT942524PCARPTRPA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT942524PCARPTRPA

The FY24 DOD Pancreatic Cancer, Translational Research Partnership Award (HT942524PCARPTRPA) is a discretionary grant program run by the Department of the Army through USAMRAA under CFDA 12.420. Its main purpose is to speed up the translation of promising pancreatic cancer discoveries into practical clinical use by funding true, two-way collaborations between a clinician investigator and a research scientist. The program is designed for projects that are harder to accomplish when the clinical and laboratory efforts are separated, and it places heavy emphasis on a shared, intellectually balanced partnership rather than a one-sided arrangement where one party simply provides samples, patients, or access.

A defining requirement is that the application must be led by two independent Principal Investigators who contribute equally to the scientific design and execution of the project. One PI is designated the Initiating PI and typically handles most of the administrative steps for submission, while the other is the Partnering PI. If funded, each PI is named on a separate award issued to the relevant organization(s), and each award comes with its own reporting and compliance responsibilities. In practice, this structure signals that both partners are expected to be fully accountable and deeply engaged throughout the work, not just consulted occasionally.

The award is specifically oriented toward translational research, meaning the project must show a reciprocal flow of ideas and information between basic science and clinical practice. The expectation is not simply "bench to bedside" or "bedside to bench" in one direction, but an iterative cycle where clinical observations shape laboratory experiments and laboratory findings are tested, refined, and validated using clinically meaningful data, specimens, or interventions. Competitive proposals typically explain exactly how clinical information will be used to close knowledge gaps, interpret outcomes, validate key findings, extend potentially transformative results, and/or pursue new observations that emerge during the study. Correlative studies are explicitly allowable, and proposals may involve the development or use of annotated biorepositories, as long as the clinical and scientific components are tightly integrated and mutually informative.

The program strongly encourages convergence science partnerships, which generally means bringing together distinct disciplines, methods, or technologies in a coordinated way to tackle complex problems. While at least one partner must have direct expertise either in pancreatic cancer research or pancreatic cancer patient care, the opportunity also welcomes experts from outside the pancreatic cancer field if their skills meaningfully strengthen the translational strategy. That openness is meant to help teams bring in capabilities such as advanced engineering, computational methods, novel imaging, immunology, chemistry, or other specialized approaches, as long as the work remains centered on a key pancreatic cancer question with a realistic pathway toward clinical relevance.

In terms of scope, the award is not intended to fully support large-scale clinical trials. However, it does allow several clinically connected approaches, including retrospective tissue analyses, correlative studies, and small pilot clinical trials. The emphasis is on credible near-term movement toward clinical application across the pancreatic cancer continuum, including prevention, diagnosis, detection, prognosis, treatment, and survivorship. Applicants are expected to clearly state why the proposed effort could materially influence pancreatic cancer research and/or patient care and how it could accelerate the adoption of promising ideas into real-world clinical settings.

Feasibility is a major review theme. Applications should demonstrate that the team has access to the necessary specimens, datasets, clinical populations, and/or interventions required to complete the proposed work. Just as important, the submission must include concrete plans for how the partners will work together across labs, clinics, and institutions, including communication routines, coordination of progress, sharing of results, and data transfer processes. For multi-institutional collaborations, an intellectual property plan is required to address potential IP or material transfer barriers that could otherwise slow down cooperation and derail the translational goals.

Preliminary data are required and must be relevant to pancreatic cancer and the proposed project, whether published or unpublished, from the PIs or named collaborators. The program also requires preliminary evidence that supports the feasibility of the hypotheses and research approaches, but it gives teams flexibility by allowing those feasibility-supporting data to come from outside pancreatic cancer if they still convincingly de-risk the core methods or mechanisms being proposed. The solicitation also recognizes that strong translational ideas can originate from several sources, including laboratory discoveries, population-based analyses, and clinician-driven insights that come from firsthand experience with patients and real-world observations.

Finally, while the ultimate aim is to advance outcomes relevant to active-duty Service Members, Veterans, other military beneficiaries, and the broader American public, the operational hallmark of this mechanism is the quality of the clinician-scientist partnership. The project must clearly depend on the unique strengths of each partner, demonstrate genuine intellectual synergy, and show a practical, believable plan for moving a pancreatic cancer concept closer to clinical use. The original closing date listed for this opportunity is October 3, 2024, with an unrestricted eligible applicant pool and an expected number of awards listed as 4.

• 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 Pancreatic 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 2024-04-29.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-10-03. (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 4 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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