Notice Number: NOT-CA-09-001

Key Dates
Release Date: October 15, 2008

Issued by
National Cancer Institute (NCI) (http://www.cancer.gov/)

Purpose

Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis (DCTD) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) supports many extramural research projects in the area of discovery and development of new therapeutic agents and diagnostic tools. In addition to sponsoring individual projects through traditional research grants, the DCTD supports the process of drug discovery and development of anticancer therapeutics by providing access to unique resources to qualified extramural researchers.  These resources include:

• Rapid Access to NCI Discovery Resources (R·A·N·D) program assists academic and nonprofit investigators in the discovery stage of anticancer drug research (http://dtp.nci.nih.gov/docs/rand/rand_index.html);
• Rapid Access to Intervention Development (RAID) program functions to assist translation to the clinic of novel anticancer therapeutic interventions, either synthetic, natural product, or biologic, that originate in the academic community (http://dtp.nci.nih.gov/docs/raid/raid_pp.html);
• The NCI DCTD Experimental Therapeutics Program (NExT), combines the strengths of DCTD’s extensive expertise in anticancer drug development with the NCI Center for Cancer Research’s dynamic in-house research and its location within new state-of-the-art facilities at the NIH Clinical Research Center. This collaboration will also utilize a recent guidance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concerning exploratory studies of investigational new drugs (http://dctd.cancer.gov/SpotlightOn/02NExT.htm); and
• The NCI DCTD Developmental Therapeutics Program (DTP) operates a tiered anti-cancer compound screening program for the benefit of the general research community with the goal of identifying novel chemical lead compounds and biological mechanisms.  The program, which includes the NCI 60-Cell Line Screen and operates at no cost to suppliers of compounds, encourages the submission of synthetic compounds and purified natural products from academic, public, and private sources worldwide (http://dtp.nci.nih.gov/docs/misc/common_files/submit_compounds.html).

These non-grant programs provide the scientific community with a range of services (see respective web pages) intended to accelerate various steps in drug discovery and development process.  Access to these resources/services is granted based on an NCI DCTD program review of unsolicited applications submitted by interested investigators (see details on web pages for respective resources).

The purpose of this Notice is to promote a better utilization of these established non-grant resources.  The DCTD intends to create effective ways to: (a) proactively identify investigators with research needs matching the available resources; (b) ensure that they are fully aware of these resources and specific options/services; and (c) encourage them to take advantage of the appropriate opportunities. 

The current procedures for granting access to the non-grant resources based on unsolicited applications of interested researchers will remain in effect.  In addition, however, to reach potential resource users proactively, the DCTD will initiate steps to identify those groups of investigators whose research projects may benefit from these non-grant resources.  Prospective resource users will be identified in the following two ways:

• Research institutions are invited to nominate researchers whose work may benefit from NCI DCTD non-grant resources, including RAID, RAND, and other preclinical and clinical drug development programs; and 
• In addition to Institutional nominations, DCTD program staff members and management will analyze the portfolio of DCTD research grants to identify those grantees who: (i) perform research in areas of particular interest to the NCI; and (ii) conduct research projects that might benefit from DCTD non-grant resources.
  

In addition to grantees identified by DCTD based on grant portfolio analysis, select grantees nominated by their institutions will be invited by the DCTD Therapeutics Working Group to the NCI to present their work and explore opportunities for collaborating with DCTD to facilitate the development/application of their novel scientific finding(s).

Participation of investigators in these outreach efforts is UNRELATED to any aspect of research funding and voluntary.  The entire process of identifying investigators and inviting them to the NCI serves the sole purpose of better informing grantees of publicly available non-grant related, research resources.  Invitation to participate and participation (or declined invitation) will neither affect in any way the review of any pending or future grant applications nor will it enhance or diminish the investigators eligibility and/or chances for any supplemental grant funding.

Inquiries

Jason Vittorio Cristofaro, J.D., Ph. D. 

Intellectual Property Advisor

National Cancer Institute/NIH/DHHS

Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis 

31 Center Drive, Room 3A44

Bethesda, MD 20892-2580 

Phone: (301) 594-5318

Fax: (301) 496-0826

E-mail:  cristofaroj@mail.nih.gov

Weekly TOC for this Announcement
NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices

	Office of Extramural Research (OER)			National Institutes of Health (NIH) 9000 Rockville Pike Bethesda, Maryland 20892			Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
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