Department of Defense Rare Cancers Idea Development Award

The FY22 RCRP Idea Development Award 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 rare cancers. Applications should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong scientific rationale.

Preliminary data with disease-specific rationale (may include correlatives studies to ongoing clinical research) 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 the proposed rare cancer type(s)/subtype(s) under study.

Key elements of the Idea Development 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 in the following ways: in concept or question, research methods or technologies, adaptations of existing methods or technologies, or other ways. Research that is likely to yield only an incremental advance is not considered innovative.

• Impact: Research that has high potential impact may lead to major advancements and greatly improve outcomes for people with rare cancers. 

The FY22 RCRP Idea Development Award 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 rare cancers. Applications should include a well-formulated, testable hypothesis based on strong scientific rationale.

Preliminary data with disease-specific rationale (may include correlatives studies to ongoing clinical research) 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 the proposed rare cancer type(s)/subtype(s) under study.

Key elements of the Idea Development 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 in the following ways: in concept or question, research methods or technologies, adaptations of existing methods or technologies, or other ways. Research that is likely to yield only an incremental advance is not considered innovative.

• Impact: Research that has high potential impact may lead to major advancements and greatly improve outcomes for people with rare cancers.