The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to stimulate translation of scientific discoveries and engineering developments in imaging, data science and/or spectroscopic technologies into methods or tools that address contemporary problems in understanding the fundamental biology, potential risk of development, diagnosis, treatment, and/or disease status for cancer or other disease.
A distinguishing feature of each application to this FOA will be formation of an academic-industrial partnership: a strategic alliance of academic and industrial investigators who work together as partners to identify and translate a technological solution for mitigation of a cancer (or other disease-related) problem. In this sense, the FOA acts more as funding mechanism for driving translational research in imaging more than for a specific scientific or clinical research area. These partnerships are expected to solidify pre-existing collaborations or new ones that would drive the field of imaging, as a whole, further than if they had not been formed.
This FOA defines innovation as likelihood to deliver a new capability to end users. This FOA will support clinical trials that test functionality, or validate performance in the chosen setting. This FOA is not intended to support commercial production, basic research projects, or clinical trials that lack translation as the primary motivation.