DoD, Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award | W81XWH 20 BCRP TBCCA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 20 BCRP TBCCA

The DoD Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award (TBCCA) is a funding opportunity from the Department of Defense (USAMRAA) intended to back one highly integrated, multi-institutional consortium that can make genuinely transformative progress toward ending breast cancer. The core idea is not incremental research or improvements to existing systems, but a collaboration built around new paradigms that can change real outcomes for people who have breast cancer or who are at risk for it. A key point that shapes the entire opportunity is that the intended "transformation" must be in peoples lives, rather than being centered on upgrading the healthcare or research system itself.

The award requires a consortium structure rather than a single lab or a loose collaboration. Applicants are expected to assemble at least four and no more than five research teams, each led by its own Principal Investigator, all working under a single Consortium Director and all tightly aligned to one central hypothesis. Each team must pursue a distinct project, but the projects cannot function as standalone sub-awards; they are expected to be meaningfully interdependent, designed so that every component contributes to testing and advancing the same overarching hypothesis. There are also structural limits intended to ensure the collaboration is truly multi-institutional: no more than two teams may be based at any one institution.

This mechanism is explicitly positioned as different from, and not meant to duplicate, large existing collaborative models such as NCI SPOREs or program project-style collections of related subprojects. In other words, it is not supposed to look like a repackaged SPORE, a set of thematically similar projects that happen to share a grant number, or an umbrella around work that could proceed largely independently. Review preference is instead directed toward applications that demonstrate real synergy across disciplines and institutions, where the major problem being tackled cannot realistically be solved by one investigator or one group working in isolation.

From a scientific emphasis standpoint, the TBCCA favors high-risk, high-reward innovation and includes support for "seed projects" during the award period to pursue brand new concepts that emerge from the consortiums work. Competitive applications are expected to bring together different disciplines under one coherent plan, ideally using an "ecologic approach" that accounts for the complexity of breast cancer by integrating multiple interacting perspectives rather than focusing narrowly on a single dimension of the disease. Applicants are encouraged to address one of the FY20 BCRP Overarching Challenges, the intersection of multiple challenges, or another comparably mission-aligned fundamental problem if they can justify that it matches the intent of the mechanism and meaningfully advances the goal of ending breast cancer. The strongest fit is a proposal that takes a deep, definitive dive into a major unanswered question, including questions that may not have been asked or answered before in the way the consortium proposes to attempt.

The solicitation also signals what will generally be viewed as out of scope for the "transformative" intent. Proposals centered primarily on drug screening efforts, testing therapeutic "cocktails," targeting a single gene or protein, creating a new formulation or derivative of an old drug, performing genomic landscape mapping analyses, or simply improving existing screening or imaging technologies (such as mammography or MRI) are identified as unlikely to meet the intent when they are the main thrust or central hypothesis. The point is not that these activities are inherently unimportant, but that they typically represent incremental or conventional approaches rather than the kind of paradigm-shifting, cross-cutting strategy the mechanism is designed to fund.

In terms of who can apply and what kinds of work can be included, eligibility is broadly open to entities that meet the opportunity requirements, and the funding instrument can be a grant or cooperative agreement. The research scope can include multidisciplinary teams of leading scientists, clinicians, and consumer advocates, reflecting the programs emphasis on integrating end-user and lived-experience perspectives alongside technical expertise. Phase I clinical trials and industry collaborations (pharmaceutical or biotechnology) may be included when appropriate, but a clinical trial is not required and the application should not be primarily a clinical trial proposal. The opportunity, as posted, lists an expected number of awards of one, underscoring how selective and flagship-style this consortium award is intended to be.

• 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, Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium 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 30, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Oct 06, 2020. (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 1 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 20 BCRP TBCCA

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