NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Cancer Institute will fund two-year grants with up to $275,000 to researchers developing new molecular methods for cancer detection, diagnosis, and prognosis.
NCI said it plans to fund studies focused on methods of detecting specific cancer characteristics and which can be used in clinical management of cancer patients or individuals who are at risk of developing cancer.
NCI has not yet determined how many of the grants it will award, and requests may not exceed $200,000 in one single year.
The research should focus on seeking molecular and cellular differences between tumors, pre-malignant, or normal tissues, according to NCI. The researchers should determine the clinical translational significance of differences in tumors and normal tissues in order to answer questions about detection, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, it said in the program announcement.
The program is sponsored by the Divisions of Cancer Treatment, Cancer Diagnosis, and Cancer Prevention.
The Cancer Diagnosis Program supports research into clinical tests that can help improve cancer diagnosis, predict how tumors will respond to therapy, and monitor the recurrence of cancer. In particular, NCI is seeking new methods for the classification and staging of cancer as well as methods to clarify the influence of genetic mutations on the course of the disease.
The Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program will aim to fund correlative studies relevant to clinical studies, including pharmacogenetic studies, analyses of predictive markers, studies of drug resistance, and immune system response.
The Cancer Biomarkers Research Group supports studies that address early-stage cancer development and initial validation of genetic and molecular biomarkers that can be used to help predict, detect, or prevent cancer.
More information about the grants program is available here.