NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The National Cancer Institute has announced that it intends to fund a series of research projects that address emerging problems in cancer under the auspices of its Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC).
Funded studies, the NCI said, will focus on the initiation, progression, and treatment of cancer, and are expected to involve interdisciplinary teams of physical scientists and cancer researchers. They also must integrate experimental biology and computational modeling to test and validate novel hypotheses in cancer.
The CSBC was launched last year with nearly $40 million in funding over three years for both member organizations and a coordinating center. Now the NCI is seeking to fund new research projects that will advance the consortium's mission of using systems biology approaches to solve challenging cancer problems. The number and size of awards granted under this funding opportunity will depend on the number of meritorious applications submitted.
Such projects should address "a well-defined, discrete, and circumscribed research question in cancer incorporating quantitative experimentation, analysis, modeling, and validation," the NCI said. Examples of appropriate areas of research include, but are not limited to, the dynamics of cell-cell interactions; tumor/stroma and tumor/immune system interactions; the effect of single-cell states on tumor behavior and ecosystems; and the effect of the microbiome on cancer.
Additional details can be found here.