DoD Prostate Cancer, Data Science Award | W81XWH 22 PCRP DSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 22 PCRP DSA

The DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) FY22 Data Science Award is a research funding opportunity focused on using modern quantitative, computational, and analytical methods to extract new knowledge from large and/or complex prostate cancer datasets. The main idea is to support data-science-driven studies that can meaningfully move the field forward and help address one or more of the program's FY22 PCRP Overarching Challenges. Projects are expected to generate practical outputs, such as tools, computational workflows, or other reusable resources, and the program places strong emphasis on making those outputs available for public use so they can benefit the wider prostate cancer research, clinical, and patient communities.

This award is built for research grounded in data-intensive disciplines as they relate to prostate cancer, including computational biology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, epidemiology, analysis of -omics data, medical imaging, digital pathology, and analysis of other clinically annotated datasets. Proposals can be single-modality or integrative, and the opportunity specifically encourages applications that combine multiple data types (for example, linking clinical outcomes with genomics, imaging, pathology, and longitudinal health record data) to produce more informative, higher-impact insights. There is particular interest in resources or tools that improve access to standardized and harmonized data for research and potentially real-time clinical care support, but applicants are not allowed to use this mechanism to create new datasets. Instead, studies must be based on established, retrospective databases, and applicants need to show that the chosen datasets are large and well-annotated enough to support appropriate analytical and statistical power.

From a research design standpoint, applicants can either develop a new data-science tool or apply and adapt existing tools and methods to prostate cancer questions. Reviewers are looking for rigor, so applications are encouraged to include strong plans for validation and evaluation, such as benchmarking, comparisons against current methods, and clear performance metrics demonstrating utility, reliability, and improvement over the state of the art. Because this award is meant to leverage existing data, prospective recruitment of human subjects is not permitted, and clinical trials are explicitly prohibited. Applicants are expected to document access to the needed datasets and/or patient samples in sufficient numbers to produce robust results, which helps reduce feasibility risk and ensures the work can proceed on schedule.

Impact is a central requirement: proposals must clearly explain how the approach will solve or materially address one or more FY22 PCRP Overarching Challenges, and why the expected outcomes would matter in both the short and long term. Competitive applications typically articulate what will be delivered at the end of the award (for example, a validated model, a deployable pipeline, a decision-support method, or a standardized harmonization framework), how it differs from existing efforts, and why it is likely to outperform current approaches or open up new capabilities for the field. The program also highlights interest in leveraging large patient studies with long-term health records and repositories that include well-annotated, high-quality biospecimens, since those assets can enable more clinically meaningful inference and stronger translational relevance.

A required component of the application is a Data and Resource Sharing Plan. The expectation is that resources, tools, and computational processes created under the award will be openly shared, rather than kept proprietary or limited to the proposing team. Applicants also need to describe how their tool or resource can be updated over time as additional data become available from future studies, so the output remains useful and improves rather than becoming a static, one-off deliverable.

The funding opportunity also includes a Partnering Principal Investigator option designed to support genuine, productive collaborations, especially between data scientists and clinicians. Under this structure, two PIs can apply together with distinct roles and contributions. One serves as the Initiating PI and leads most submission and administrative tasks, while the Partnering PI plays a substantive role in shaping the project narrative, statement of work, and overall scientific plan. If selected, each PI is named on an individual award within the recipient organization, reflecting the collaborative structure.

Awards under this announcement are issued as assistance agreements, meaning they will be either a grant or a cooperative agreement depending on how much substantial involvement the DoD expects to have during the project. If the agency anticipates no substantial involvement, the award is typically a grant; if collaboration or active participation by the agency is anticipated, it may be structured as a cooperative agreement, and the nature of that involvement would be specified during negotiation.

Programmatically, the research must be relevant to active-duty Service Members, Veterans, military beneficiaries, and/or the American public, and the DoD strongly encourages collaborations between military or Veteran institutions and non-military institutions to take advantage of unique populations, infrastructure, and clinical resources. Applicants are also encouraged to consider the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force, particularly ideas that could accelerate progress for advanced or recurrent disease, as long as they remain within the boundaries of this specific data science mechanism.

On the funding and timing side, the anticipated direct costs for the full period of performance cannot exceed $1 million per award. The program planned to allocate about $6.04 million total to fund approximately four awards. Awards were expected to be made no later than September 30, 2023, and projects funded with FY22 dollars would have spending availability tied to the fiscal lifecycle of those funds, with FY22 funds expiring for use on September 30, 2028. Eligibility is described as unrestricted (open to many entity types), subject to any additional clarifications in the announcement.

Finally, while prospective recruitment and trials are not allowed, projects may still involve human data, specimens, or anatomical substances when derived from existing sources. DoD-funded work involving human subjects materials requires review by the USAMRDC Human Research Protection Office (HRPO) in addition to local IRB or ethics review, with HRPO approval required before research implementation. Local IRB approval is not required at submission, but teams should plan for regulatory timelines, as HRPO review can take up to about three months after submission of complete documentation. Multi-institution studies must also include a plan for single IRB arrangements when applicable. If the project relies on DoD or VA resources or databases, the application must explain how access will be obtained and maintained throughout the project period.

• 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 Prostate Cancer, Data 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, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 25, 2022. (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 (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 22 PCRP DSA

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