The Department of Defense is offering the Vision Clinical Trial Award to support early-phase clinical trials for eye injury and visual dysfunction.

The FY21 VRP CTA supports the rapid implementation of early-phase clinical trials (i.e., phase 0 through phase 2a) of new interventions with the potential to have a significant impact on service-connected eye injury and visual dysfunction. Clinical trials may be designed to evaluate promising new products, pharmacologic agents (drugs or biologics), devices, clinical guidance, and/or emerging approaches and technologies.

Funding from this award mechanism must support a clinical trial. A clinical trial is defined as a research study in which one or more human subjects are prospectively assigned to one or more interventions (which may include placebo or other control) to evaluate the effects of the interventions on biomedical or behavioral health-related outcomes. Funded trials are required to post a copy of the Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved informed consent form used to enroll subjects on a publicly available federal website in accordance with federal requirements described in the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 32, Part 219 (32 CFR 219).