DoD Prostate Cancer, Data Science Award | W81XWH 21 PCRP DSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 21 PCRP DSA

The FY21 DoD Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP) Data Science Award is a research funding opportunity focused on using modern quantitative and analytical methods to extract new knowledge from large or complex prostate cancer datasets. The central idea is to support projects that either build new data-science-driven tools or apply and adapt existing computational methods in ways that meaningfully advance prostate cancer research and, ultimately, patient care. Funded work is expected to push progress against one or more of the FY21 PCRP Overarching Challenges, with a strong emphasis on producing results or products that are clearly differentiated from what already exists and that can outperform current approaches.

This award is specifically aimed at data-intensive and computationally driven prostate cancer research, drawing from fields such as computational biology, bioinformatics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, epidemiology, omics analyses, medical imaging, digital pathology, and other types of clinically annotated datasets. Applicants can integrate multiple data types (for example, combining imaging with pathology and genomics, or linking molecular data to long-term clinical outcomes) to generate deeper insight than any single dataset could provide alone. A particular area of interest is the development of resources or tools that improve access to standardized and harmonized datasets for research, clinical care, and patient communities, including real-time clinical care applications. At the same time, the program is explicit that this mechanism cannot be used to create new datasets; projects must rely on existing, established retrospective data sources.

Methodologically, proposals are expected to be rigorous and defensible from a data science standpoint. The opportunity encourages clear plans for validation and evaluation, such as benchmarking against existing methods, head-to-head comparisons, or other quality and utility assessments that demonstrate reliability, generalizability, and practical value. Because the work is meant to be grounded in large-scale evidence, the dataset must be sufficiently large to support appropriate statistical and analytical power, and applicants must document that they have access to the necessary datasets and/or patient samples. When access depends on external repositories, retrospective datasets, or resources associated with ongoing studies, letters of support are encouraged to show that the data will be available as proposed.

A major requirement of the award is openness and sharing. Any tools, resources, and computational processes developed are expected to be made available for public use, so the broader research and patient communities can benefit. Applications must include a Data and Resource Sharing Plan describing how outputs will be shared and maintained, and also how the approach will be designed to incorporate additional data produced by future studies so the tools and methods can be refined over time. In other words, the program is not just looking for one-off analyses; it is looking for durable, reusable data science contributions to the field.

Collaboration is strongly encouraged through a formal Partnering Principal Investigator option that supports two PIs with distinct and complementary contributions. This structure is designed to make it easier to build genuine team science, especially partnerships between data scientists and clinicians. One PI serves as the Initiating PI and handles most submission administration, while the Partnering PI is an equal scientific contributor; if funded, each PI is named on an individual award within their organization.

From an administrative and funding standpoint, awards are made as assistance agreements, meaning they will be issued either as a grant or a cooperative agreement depending on how much substantial involvement the Department of Defense anticipates having during the project. Direct costs for the full period of performance are capped at $1.0 million. The program planned to allocate about $4.8 million total to fund roughly three awards. The original application closing date was July 29, 2021, with awards anticipated no later than September 30, 2022, and FY21 funds expected to remain available for use until September 30, 2027.

There are also important boundaries on what the award will and will not support. Prospective recruitment of human subjects and clinical trials are not allowed. The program defines clinical trials in the standard way: prospective assignment of human subjects to interventions to evaluate health-related outcomes. However, retrospective studies using existing data are clearly within scope, and certain uses of de-identified existing data may fall outside CDMRP-defined clinical research (for example, research consistent with IRB Exemption 4). For any DoD-funded work involving human subjects, human anatomical substances, or human cadavers, projects must undergo additional review by the USAMRDC Office of Research Protections/Human Research Protection Office (HRPO) before research begins, on top of local IRB or ethics review; applicants are advised to plan for a multi-month regulatory timeline. For multi-institution projects, a single-IRB plan is required.

Finally, the opportunity emphasizes public benefit and relevance to military-connected communities. Proposed work must be relevant to active-duty Service Members, Veterans, military beneficiaries, and/or the broader American public, and collaborations between military/VA institutions and non-military institutions are encouraged to leverage unique populations, infrastructure, and clinical resources. Applicants are also encouraged to consider ideas aligned with recommendations from the congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force, as long as proposals remain within the scope and limitations of this data science-focused award.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Prostate Cancer, Data Science Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on Apr 08, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 29, 2021. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 3 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 21 PCRP DSA

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