DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer, Translational Team Science Award | HT9425 23 PRCRP TTSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT9425 23 PRCRP TTSA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer, Translational Team Science Award (TTSA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity under the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) that is designed to push promising cancer findings closer to real-world patient benefit. In practical terms, it supports hypothesis-driven translational research that is tightly connected to an ongoing or completed clinical trial. The expectation is that applicants are not starting from scratch: the proposed work should build directly on clinical investigation results and use trial-derived information to guide the next logical steps toward a next-phase clinical trial or a future clinical application. While the mechanism can include funding for clinical trial activities, the program is not meant to function as a simple clinical trial funding source. Instead, it emphasizes a broader, team-based translational effort where clinical observations and laboratory or mechanistic work inform each other in a way that clearly advances patient-relevant questions.

A central feature of the TTSA is its required team structure and true collaboration model. Each application must be led by a multi-investigator team with at least two and no more than three Principal Investigators working under one overarching research strategy within one or more of the required FY23 PRCRP Topic Areas. One PI serves as the Initiating PI and typically handles most submission and administrative coordination, while the other(s) serve as Partnering PI(s). Importantly, the program expects this to be more than a formality: all PIs should play major, substantive roles in shaping the science, including contributing meaningfully to the project narrative, the statement of work, and other core proposal components. If selected, each PI is named on an individual award within their organization, reinforcing the idea that this is a shared scientific responsibility rather than a single-lab project with minor collaborators.

The DoD also strongly encourages inclusion of at least one military or Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) investigator as an equal partner. This is not presented as a strict eligibility requirement, but it is clearly a priority within the program. The announcement defines qualifying military/VA investigators broadly, including active-duty or active-reserve personnel detailed to agencies outside DoD, civilian DoD investigators, and investigators at VA research facilities. Just as important is how they are expected to participate: the military/VA investigator should have a substantial intellectual and effort-based role in the research and should not be added simply to facilitate access to military or VA patient populations. The emphasis is on genuine scientific partnership that strengthens the project.

From a scientific scope standpoint, the TTSA targets advanced translational studies that address concrete clinical problems and near-term patient impact. Competitive projects are expected to tackle critical knowledge gaps tied to clinical outcomes, validate key results emerging from clinical research, expand on potentially game-changing signals, or pursue novel clinical findings that emerged from trial work. The award is intentionally focused on translation that moves both ways between bench and bedside, meaning proposals should show a clear plan for reciprocal flow of information between laboratory science and clinical science. For example, clinical trial observations might drive mechanistic lab studies to explain responders versus non-responders, or lab-derived hypotheses might be tested and refined using clinical trial biospecimens and outcome data, with the goal of informing treatment strategies, biomarkers, or future study design.

The program also draws lines around what it does not want to fund. High-throughput screening efforts or broad sequencing exercises that are not tightly justified as translational steps tied to a clinical trial context are explicitly discouraged. This reflects the program’s preference for focused, clinically anchored investigations rather than large exploratory discovery projects that may take longer to translate or may not be clearly linked to actionable clinical decisions.

Application readiness is another key theme. The TTSA requires preliminary clinical data relevant to the proposed studies, reinforcing that proposals should be grounded in real clinical evidence rather than early-stage concepts. In addition, the research plan is expected to be rigorously designed with a clear statistical plan and data analysis plan. The stated rationale for this requirement is the award’s emphasis on near-term patient relevance: reviewers want to see that the study design, endpoints, and analysis approach are capable of producing results that are interpretable, robust, and meaningful for clinical decision-making and patient outcomes.

Impact is treated as a primary review driver. Applicants are expected to articulate how the work could significantly influence cancer research and/or patient care and how it could accelerate the movement of promising ideas into clinical use. This can include prevention, detection, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and survivorship, but the work must align with at least one of the FY23 PRCRP Overarching Challenges referenced in the full announcement. The overall goal is to assemble a synergistic, multidisciplinary team whose combined expertise can solve a clinical problem in a way that would be difficult for any single investigator or single-discipline group to accomplish alone.

Administratively, this opportunity was released by the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). It is listed under Funding Opportunity Number HT9425 23 PRCRP TTSA and uses grant and cooperative agreement funding instruments under the Science and Technology / Research and Development activity category (CFDA 12.420). Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to many entity types, subject to any additional eligibility details in the full funding notice. The opportunity anticipated making around nine awards, and it listed an award ceiling of 0 in the source record, which typically indicates that applicants must rely on the full announcement for budget limits or that budgeting is handled through other stated constraints. The original closing date for FY23 was August 10, 2023, which is mainly useful as a reference point for the cycle described, since future years may reissue similar mechanisms with updated dates and requirements.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer, Translational Team Science 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 Apr 04, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 10, 2023. (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 9 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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