The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to encourage applications for collaborative R01 projects from multi-disciplinary teams to expand, improve, or transform the reliability and utility of mammalian cancer and tumor models for translational research. For a linked set of collaborative R01s, each site has its own Program Director(s)/Principal Investigator(s), and the program provides a mechanism for cross-site coordination and communication. Collaborative studies are appropriate to address translational modeling research questions beyond the capacity of a single-site investigation, particularly to accommodate collaborations among sites with diverse expertise, perspectives, and contributions.
With this FOA, the NCI intends to encourage submission of multidisciplinary projects devoted to demonstrating that mammalian models or their derivatives used for translational research are robust representations of human biology, are appropriate to test questions of clinical importance, and provide reliable information for patients' benefit. These practical goals contrast with the goals of many mechanistic, NCI-supported R01 projects that employ mammals, or develop and use mammalian cancer models, transplantation tumor models, or models derived from mammalian or human tissues or cells for hypothesis-testing, non-clinical research. Among many other possible endeavors, teams of applicants in response to this FOA could propose demonstrations of how to overcome translational deficiencies of mammalian oncology models, define new uses of mammalian models or their genetics for unexplored translational challenges, advance standard practices for use of translational models, test approaches to validate and credential models, or challenge current practices for how models are used translationally.