Children’s Tumor Foundation launches Clinical Research Award (US)

Focus Areas

• The Clinical Research Award (CRA) program aims to advance the development of effective clinical treatments, interventions, and management of patients living with NF.
• Priority consideration will be given to proposals that:
  • Investigate bold, forward-thinking solutions and treatments that could improve the everyday functioning of people with NF.
  • Promote new directions for disease management that would likely progress to future large-scale studies with the potential to compete for additional external funding.
• Proposals can include but are not limited to:
  • Prospective or retrospective clinical studies.
  • Pilot clinical trials.
  • Correlative investigations adjunct to an ongoing clinical trial.
  • Biomarker studies (e.g. molecular, imaging, or genetic biomarkers) that may help to diagnose, monitor or prevent disease.
  • Patient-reported outcome measures or other real-world evidence that can assess disease burden, risk stratification, short- or long-term treatment effects, etc., for specific manifestations.
  • Observational studies to include natural history/real world evidence, and clinical heterogeneity and its relation to genetics, environmental, or biologic factors.

Funding Information

• The CRA program provides funding for TWO YEARS. Funding requests have a maximum of $200,000 total for the entire two-year period and is INCLUSIVE of up to 10% indirect costs.

Eligibility Criteria

• Applicants should have an MD or PhD or other advanced degree from a recognized US or non-US institution.
• There is no citizenship requirement. Applications are welcome from qualified individuals worldwide.
• Applications are welcome from both academic and private sectors.
• CTF requires all applicants to acquire a personal ORCID ID and to elect CTF as a trusted partner on ORCID. Once an applicant has granted permission, CTF as the trusted organization will be able to see information that they have set as visible to trusted parties in addition to the information set as visible to everyone. Since Proposal Central has developed an extended integration with ORCID to allow seamless data transfer, applicants are strongly encouraged to keep their ORCID ID record up to date especially in the Education, Funding and Works (publications) sections.
• New submissions from current or past grantees are welcome at every CRA cycle. Recipients of past or current grants may submit a new proposal or a proposal for a funded extension of a current study for a maximum of 2 consecutive cycles (in the case of extensions). Applications for funded grant extensions will be reviewed, scored, and recommended for funding together with all other submissions for that cycle.
• Existing grant timelines cannot overlap with new grant request timelines.
• Grantees may request a 1 year no-cost extension at the end of the initial grant period.

Review Criteria

• All applications will be reviewed by the CTF CRA Program Committee, external reviewers, NF patient/caregiver reviewers where necessary. A statistical review of the experimental protocol will be included for applications as needed. Reviewers will consider, in order of importance:
  • Impact of proposed research
  • Feasibility of proposed research
  • Transparency/soundness of experimental protocol
  • Appropriateness of budget
  • Applicant qualifications
  • Open science/data sharing readiness

Application Requirements

• The CRA application process comprises two stages, which will be executed through the Proposal Central grants management platform. Stage 1 is the Letter of Intent (LOI) or pre-application outlining the proposed project and its key aims. LOIs will be reviewed by the CRA program committee. Those meeting criteria will be invited to submit a full proposal (Stage 2).
• Stage 1 – Letter of Intent:
  • The Letter of Intent is an online form and below are some of the important sections –
    • Project Details
    • Hypothesis and aims of the study (4000 characters)
    • Overview of the study design (4000 characters)
  • Research significance
    • Filling a gap in NF research (2500 characters)
    • Impact on NF patients (2500 characters)
  • Budget Summary
  • Organizational Assurances
• Stage 2 – Full Application:
  • Applicants invited to submit the full application will be asked to provide –
  • Lay Abstract – Entered directly in the application form on ProposalCentral.
  • Maximum of 2500 characters.
  • Scientific Abstract – Entered directly in the application form on ProposalCentral.
  • Maximum of 2500 characters.
  • Research Plan – To upload on ProposalCentral. The Research Plan (6 pages max, single line spacing, Calibri size 11 font) must include –
    • Introduction and aims of proposed research
    • Research design and methodology
    • Milestones and timelines, summary of available resources
    • Significance of proposed research, how it advances the development of effective therapies or care for NF patients and what you envision as possible future directions for this work
• Citations – To upload on ProposalCentral. All relevant literature is cited in a separate document that is uploaded separately.
• Open Access Research Output – Entered directly in the application form. In addition to the requirement of key data sharing  described below, CTF values the open sharing of research outputs such as open access articles, open access books, book chapters, and/or monographs, copies of your papers, chapters, monographs, or other published materials in institutional or disciplinary repositories, preprints, datasets, software/code, materials/reagents, preregistration plans, public disclosure of negative results, and any other outputs, and encourages all its awardees to make all research outputs publicly available.
• Biographical Sketch – A NIH biosketch template will be provided in the application form.
• Budget Justification – Budget template will be available in the application form.
• Commitment to submit a Data Sharing Plan – CTF template will be available in the application form.
• Patent Policy – CTF template will be available in the application form
• Applicant institutions are strongly recommended to sign the CTF Patent Policy at the time of application submission in order to speed up the process of award activation.

For more information, visit Children’s Tumor Foundation.