Deadline:  March 1, 2020

The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation (Alliance Foundation) announces a request for proposals to support research focused on addressing high
priority research areas defined during the Alliance 2018 Scientific Strategic Retreat.

Background
The Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (Alliance) is a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research consortium whose mission is to reduce the impact of cancer by uniting a broad community of scientists and clinicians from many disciplines, committed to discovering, validating and disseminating effective strategies for the prevention and treatment of cancer.

Alliance achieves this purpose by:

• conducting high quality multidisciplinary cancer control, prevention, and treatment trials that engage a comprehensive research network;
• furthering our understanding of the biological basis of the cancer process and its treatment, from discovery, to validation, to clinical practice;
• providing a scientific and operational infrastructure for innovative clinical and translational research in academic and community settings.

Every two years, Alliance leaders participate in a scientific strategic retreat, during which a number of research priorities are defined. The goal of these priorities is to focus innovation by Alliance scientific committees on a few strategic areas, with the expectation that attention to these priorities will challenge researchers to move beyond what is currently possible and accelerate the development of new treatments, cancer control approaches, and cancer care delivery results. These
strategic priorities generally focus upon fostering engagement of new disciplines or technologies relevant to Alliance research, or upon work to improve the design and implementation of Alliance clinical trials.

Current Alliance Strategic Priorities, announced in November 2018, are the following:

• Build an infrastructure to enable studies improving/defining the value of cancer care
• Develop blood-based biomarkers to address treatment response and characterize treatment resistance
• Develop treatments for tumor genomic subsets: e.g., design an Alliance strategy based upon lessons learned from MATCH and TAPUR
• Simplify data requirements and data collection

Proposal Requirements:

• Principal Investigator (contact PI) must be an Alliance member in good standing
• Proposal must address one of the four current Alliance Strategic Priorities
• Proposal Specific Aims must be achievable in a two-year time-frame, and if selected for funding it is expected that the work will be completed
  within two years following funding
• If the proposed work involves NCI-supported research, approval by the appropriate NCI committees may be required before final approval and
  funding of the project

Proposal Format:
Specific Aims: 1-page maximum
Research Plan: 2-3 pages maximum
Relevance to Alliance Strategic Priority: 1-page maximum
Qualifications of Research Team: 1-page maximum
Sustainability Strategy: 1-page maximum
Budget
References

Review Criteria:
The following questions will be used by the review panel to assess the suitability of the proposed work and to assign priority for funding:

• How well does the proposal address the relevant Strategic Priority?
• Is the Alliance an appropriate environment for execution of the proposed research?
• Does the work involve collaboration across two or more Alliance institutions?
• Is the work achievable within the two-year timeframe?
• Is the research team qualified to conduct the proposed research?
• If the end result of the research is to set up a new research initiative or program, how will this new effort be sustained once the initial funding is
  completed?

Funding Source, Funding Amounts, and Reporting Requirements:

The funding for this RFP is provided by the Alliance Foundation, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit corporation whose purpose is to support the mission of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology.

A total of $1,000,000 is allocated for this RFP. Individual proposal budgets are limited to a maximum total cost of $200,000, of which no more than 15% can be allocated to indirect costs. Proposals for projects requiring less than the maximal amount are also welcome.

Successful applicants will be required to provide yearly progress reports to the Alliance Foundation, detailing scientific progress and funding allocation.

Proposal Due Date and Submission Information:

Proposals must be submitted by March 1, 2020 and sent to:
Suzanne George, MD
c/o Katie Kamb
Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation
kkamb@bwh.harvard.edu

Announcement and Funding Date:

PIs of successful proposals will be notified by May 15, 2020, with funding available upon confirmation of Institutional Review Board approval of the proposed work (if required), and completion of agreements between relevant research parties and the Alliance Foundation.