Through this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) invites research grant applications (R01) for the development and application of current and emerging molecular imaging methods to gain fundamental insights into cancer inflammation in vivo.
The motivation for this initiative is the recognition that much of the current imaging research on inflammation in cancer relies heavily on in vitro and ex vivo methods. These approaches have limited potential to provide significant insights into the dynamic interactions between cancer and inflammation. Utilizing molecular imaging probes in pre-clinical and clinical investigations allows for precise temporal resolution at molecular and cellular levels. This information is valuable for identifying and characterizing in vivo inflammatory cellular physiology in cancer and for detecting molecular changes in response to treatment.
This NOFO encourages applications focused on developing integrated imaging approaches to investigate the role of inflammation in cancer through strong cross-discipline collaboration between cancer basic science researchers and imaging scientists. These collaborations are expected to advance the science and understanding of cancer inflammation interactions.