The Department of Defense is offering the Lung Cancer Idea Development Award to support innovative, early-stage lung cancer research.

The FY22 LCRP Idea Development Award mechanism promotes new ideas that are still in the early stages of development and have the potential to yield impactful data and new avenues of investigation. This award supports conceptually innovative, high-risk/high-reward research that could lead to critical discoveries or major advancements that will accelerate progress toward eradicating deaths and suffering from lung cancer. Research applications only in the area of mesothelioma will not be accepted. Applications should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong scientific rationale.

New Investigators: The FY22 LCRP Idea Development Award mechanism encourages applications from independent investigators in the early stages of their careers (i.e., within 10 years of their first faculty appointment or equivalent). The New Investigator category is designed to allow applicants early in their faculty appointments to compete for funding separately from established investigators. Applications from New Investigators and Established Investigators will be peer and programmatically reviewed separately. Principal Investigators (PIs) using the New Investigator category are strongly encouraged to strengthen their applications by collaborating with investigators experienced in lung cancer research and/or possessing other relevant expertise. It is the responsibility of the applicant to describe how the included collaboration will augment the PI’s expertise to best address the research question. All applicants for the New Investigator category must meet specific eligibility criteria as described in Section II.C, Eligibility Information.

Preliminary data to support the feasibility of the research hypotheses and research approaches are required; however, these data do not necessarily need to be derived from studies of lung cancer.

Key elements of this award are as follows:

• Innovation: Research deemed innovative may introduce a new paradigm, challenge current paradigms, look at existing problems from new perspectives, or exhibit other uniquely creative qualities.

• Impact: Research that has high potential impact may lead to major advancements and significantly accelerate progress toward eradicating deaths and suffering from lung cancer.

It is the responsibility of the PI to clearly and explicitly articulate the project’s innovation and its potential impact on lung cancer and its relevance to Military Health System (MHS) beneficiaries. The project’s impact to both lung cancer research and to patients with lung cancer should be articulated, even if clinical impact is not an immediate outcome. Applications that demonstrate exceptional scientific merit but lack innovation and high potential impact do not meet the intent of the Idea Development Award.

Relevance to Military Health: The LCRP seeks to support research that is relevant to the healthcare needs of military Service Members, Veterans, and their families. Relevance to military health will be considered in determining relevance to the mission of the DHP and FY22 LCRP during programmatic review. Investigators are strongly encouraged to consider the following characteristics as examples of how a project may demonstrate relevance to military health:

• Use of military or Veteran populations, biospecimens, data/databases, or programs in the proposed research.

• Collaboration with Department of Defense (DOD) or Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) investigators.

• Explanation of how the project addresses an aspect of lung cancer that has relevance or is unique to the military, Veterans, other MHS beneficiaries, or family readiness of Service Members, including environmental exposures other than tobacco.