DoD Kidney Cancer Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators - Early-Career Investigator Award | W81XWH 19 KCRP AKCIECIA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 19 KCRP AKCIECIA

The DoD Kidney Cancer Research Program (KCRP) Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators - Early-Career Investigator Award (AKCIECIA) is a career-development-plus-research funding opportunity designed to help junior faculty build durable, independent careers in kidney cancer research. Rather than functioning like a traditional mentored K-style award that is mostly a one-on-one relationship at a single institution, this program is built around a structured, interactive virtual academy. The idea is to pair each Early-Career Investigator (ECI), who applies as the Principal Investigator (PI), with a Designated Mentor who has kidney cancer expertise, and then place those pairs into a cohort that meets regularly, collaborates, and grows together under the guidance of an Academy Dean. The larger purpose is to create a national community of emerging kidney cancer leaders who benefit from intensive mentoring, peer support, and networking that they might not be able to access locally.

The AKCI model emphasizes active participation and shared learning. ECIs are expected to engage in monthly webinars, attend recurring workshops, communicate with other ECIs and mentors, and connect with the kidney cancer advocacy community. The Academy Dean plays a central role as a facilitator and progress monitor, helping ensure that investigators are moving forward scientifically while also developing the professional skills needed to run a productive lab or research team. Those skills can include leadership development, managing people and projects, and becoming competitive for future funding. Importantly, the Dean position is competed under a separate funding opportunity, and the Dean cannot serve as a Designated Mentor on ECI applications.

From a research standpoint, the award supports an ECI-led kidney cancer project that can be basic, translational, and/or clinical in nature, but clinical trials are explicitly not allowed under this mechanism. Applicants must include preliminary data to demonstrate feasibility; however, the program allows flexibility because the preliminary data do not have to come directly from kidney cancer research, as long as they credibly support the proposed approach. A key practical feature is that the Designated Mentor does not need to be at the same institution as the ECI, which is meant to reduce the common barrier of limited local mentorship and to broaden access to high-quality guidance.

A notable priority of this funding mechanism is supporting ECIs who face resource constraints that make it harder to establish a kidney cancer research program. The announcement explicitly encourages applications from investigators whose progress is limited by issues such as lack of an appropriate mentor at their home institution, limited access to kidney cancer-specific tools or infrastructure, difficulty forming collaborations, or other obstacles. Applicants are expected to identify these barriers and explain how participation in the Academy structure, along with the proposed mentoring and collaboration plan, will help overcome them. The expectation is that the investigator will not only benefit from the Academy but will also contribute to it, showing a clear commitment to becoming a long-term kidney cancer researcher and an engaged member of the cohort.

The mentoring requirements are also structured to expand mentorship capacity across the Academy. The Designated Mentor must demonstrate a strong track record of mentoring and training early-career researchers. In addition to serving as the Primary mentor for the applying ECI, each Designated Mentor must also agree to serve as a Secondary mentor to a different ECI within the Academy. To keep workloads reasonable and distributed, each mentor is limited to one Primary mentorship and one Secondary mentorship within this program.

The program includes required in-person engagement through DoD-hosted workshops: the ECI and Designated Mentor must attend a biennial multi-day workshop, and in the alternating years attend a one-day workshop. This mix of virtual and workshop-based engagement is intended to maintain momentum, accountability, and collaboration over the full award period, while still being feasible for investigators at different institutions.

In terms of funding and duration, the award provides up to four years of support, including protected time for the ECI to conduct intensive research under mentorship while also building independence. The budget is capped at $725,000 in direct costs total across the entire period of performance. For FY19, CDMRP planned to allocate about $4.64 million to fund roughly four awards, with final selections depending on federal fund availability, peer review scores, and programmatic considerations. Awards were expected to be issued no later than September 30, 2020, and FY19 funds associated with these awards were expected to be available for use only for a limited window, with an expiration date of September 30, 2025.

Projects must be relevant to the health needs of active duty Service members, Veterans, military beneficiaries, and/or the general public, which is a standard DoD framing that ties the research to military and public health impact. The award may be issued as either a grant or a cooperative agreement, depending on how much substantial involvement the DoD anticipates having during performance. If the agency expects minimal involvement, it will use a grant; if collaboration or other hands-on involvement is expected, it may use a cooperative agreement, with the specific nature of that involvement spelled out in the award.

The announcement also highlights compliance requirements that can affect timelines, especially for studies involving humans or animals. Any DoD-funded research involving human subjects, human anatomical substances, or human cadavers must undergo review by the USAMRMC Office of Research Protections Human Research Protection Office (HRPO) before the research begins, in addition to any local IRB or ethics review. Local IRB approval is not required at application submission, but investigators should plan for HRPO review to take at least 2 to 3 months, and potentially longer for international clinical research settings. Applications that recruit human subjects must also include quarterly enrollment targets, and awardees may be held to recruitment milestones as a condition of continued support. Similarly, animal research requires review by ACURO in addition to the local IACUC, with a comparable expectation that regulatory review will take at least 2 to 3 months, and that approvals must be in place before animal work starts.

Finally, the opportunity points applicants toward broader federal priorities in metastatic cancer research, noting the recommendations from the Congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force and encouraging kidney cancer research ideas that align with those recommendations, as long as they fit the KCRP priorities and the limitations of the mechanism (including the no-clinical-trials rule). Overall, this award is best understood as a cohort-based, mentorship-intensive, research-enabled career accelerator for early-career kidney cancer investigators, combining substantial research support with a structured national training and networking environment.

• 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 Kidney Cancer Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators - Early-Career Investigator 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 Jun 18, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Oct 01, 2019. (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 4 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 19 KCRP AKCIECIA

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