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National Cancer Institute (NCI)

This Notice is to inform the research community that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) intends to issue a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to solicit applications for the Pediatric Immunotherapy Network (PIN). The purpose of this RFA is to establish a collaborative network consisting of investigators with relevant expertise to develop and advance novel translational immunotherapy approaches for children and adolescents with solid tumors including brain tumors.

This Notice is being provided to allow potential applicants sufficient time to develop a responsive grant application.

The FOA is expected to be published in Spring 2022 with an expected application due date in Fall 2022. Details of a planned pre-application webinar will be announced in the Guide after publication of the FOA.

Each PIN U01 program will address a discrete, relevant pediatric immunotherapy research opportunity.

Potential areas of research may include but are not limited to:

• Identification and characterization of antigenic epitopes that are uniquely and abundantly expressed on pediatric solid tumors;
• Molecular and immune profiling of the pediatric solid tumor immune microenvironment;
• Development of optimized, highly specific binders for novel pediatric cancer immunotherapy targets;
• Development and validation of novel immunotherapy agents;
• Development and application of approaches for in vivo preclinical testing of novel immunotherapy agents, including immune competent pediatric cancer models and humanized mouse models;
• Reverse translation approaches using clinical specimens to interrogate mechanism of action or resistance to immunotherapy;
• Development of strategies to modulate the pediatric solid tumor immune microenvironment to make immunotherapy agents such as CAR T cells and T cell engaging agents more effective;
• Investigating pediatric specific anti-tumor immunity and pediatric immune evasion mechanisms of solid tumors.

Multiple Project Director/Principal Investigator (PD/PI) and multi-institutional collaborations are encouraged in order to achieve the breadth of expertise required for a comprehensive approach to pediatric immunotherapy research and to accelerate the pace at which effective immunotherapies are realized for pediatric solid tumors. Collaborative teams should have diverse and multi-disciplinary strengths across basic and translational science to achieve their scientific research objectives. Given the unmet clinical need, the scope of PIN will be limited to investigating pediatric solid tumors including brain tumors.

TBD