Strategic Partnering to Evaluate Cancer Signatures

The summary for the Strategic Partnering to Evaluate Cancer Signatures grant is detailed below. This summary states who is eligible for the grant, how much grant money will be awarded, current and past deadlines, Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) numbers, and a sampling of similar government grants. Verify the accuracy of the data FederalGrants.com provides by visiting the webpage noted in the Link to Full Announcement section or by contacting the appropriate person listed as the Grant Announcement Contact. If any section is incomplete, please visit the website for the National Institutes of Health, which is the U.S. government agency offering this grant.

Strategic Partnering to Evaluate Cancer Signatures: The purpose of this initiative is to build on recent demonstrations that molecular signatures correlate with important clinical parameters in cancer. NCI invites investigators to form strategic partnerships that will bring together the multi-disciplinary expertise and resources needed to determine how the information derived from comprehensive molecular analyses can be used to improve patient care and ultimately, patient outcomes. Applicants are asked to propose evaluation of potential clinical usefulness of molecular signatures already developed using a variety of molecular analysis technologies including DNA, RNA or protein-based technologies. Molecular signatures have been able, in retrospective studies, to identify subgroups of patients whose tumors are histopathologically the same but who have different clinical outcomes. The challenge is to translate the information in these molecular signatures into tools that can be used in clinical decision-making. To meet this challenge, signatures must be confirmed in independent studies. Critical elements of signatures that correlate most strongly with the clinical endpoint of interest must be identified and confirmed. Robust assays feasible for use in the clinical setting must be developed and validated. This iterative process of signature refinement and confirmation and assay refinement requires diverse scientific expertise and access to significant patient and tissue resources. This initiative is an open competition that will provide the cancer research community the opportunity to establish collaborations focused on the translation of promising molecular profiles toward clinical application. NCI will continue the policy of requiring public release in a timely fashion of the rich data sets generated during these projects. Access to these data sets will benefit the entire cancer research community. This initiative will help ensure that the NCI goal of eliminating the suffering and death from cancer by 2015 is met.