ACCELERATED PEER REVIEW OF AMENDED NCI PROGRAM PROJECT APPLICATIONS Release Date: October 16, 1998 P.T. National Cancer Institute Effective immediately, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has put in place a procedure for the accelerated peer re-review (APR) of program project (P01) applications that are rated as being highly meritorious, but still fail to fall within the Institute"s P01 payline. Eligible applicants will be invited to submit an abbreviated response to the original review (as described below) in lieu of a full amended application, and have it considered in the next review cycle. This will reduce the amendment review cycle from eight to four months. The aims are to significantly decrease the burden on applicants and reduce the wait for re-review for possible NCI funding, with the resultant destabilizing effects on the research programs of applicants and grantees. In order to be eligible for APR, applications must have achieved a priority score within 15 points of the current P01 payline, and the concerns noted in the summary statement must be addressable in a concise and straightforward manner. Examples would include deletion of a weak project or core, minor changes in specific experiments or methods, addition of key preliminary data or expertise, or recent acquisition of an essential reagent. When considering deletion of major elements, note that the amended program project must still include a minimum of three research projects. Principal Investigators of eligible applications will be notified by Program Staff that they have the opportunity to submit a written response to the summary statement critique that will be considered by the P01 Scientific Review Group (SRG) at its next meeting. If the previous review was done by a Special Emphasis Panel, the panel would be reconvened by teleconference. The submission should be a brief point-for-point response, where necessary, to significant concerns raised in the critique. The response is not to exceed 20 pages, excluding biographical sketches for any new project personnel, reprints or preprints of accepted manuscripts, and revised budget pages, if any. It is anticipated that responses will be concentrated on those sections of the application needing the most revision, not on elements rated very highly by the review committee. A new grant application face page bearing the appropriate institutional signatures must be appended to the response. If the response involves a change in the requested budget, complete updated budget pages must also be submitted. The SRG will consider the response in the re-review of the application according to the usual P01 review criteria, and vote a new priority score. A section headed "Accelerated Peer Review Note" will be added to the existing summary statement following the Overall Critique. This note will summarize the discussions of the SRG subcommittee. Addition of new projects or cores, or major revisions of specific aims would be beyond the scope of this approach. Applications in need of such amendment will be required to use the regular full amended application process and cycle. Please note that the response submitted for APR consideration will count as one of the two revised application submissions currently allowed by the NIH, and the summary statement with the SRG APR Note will be considered "Amended". The NCI APR procedure, therefore, is available for new and competing renewal applications and applications that have been revised once. (Applications that have been revised twice are no longer eligible for additional reviews under current NIH rules.) It is expected that this procedure will save time for applicants both in the preparation of their responses and in the time involved in the peer review process. However, all applicants eligible for APR will still have the option to decline the accelerated process and to revise fully their application in the usual way and resubmit in time for the next standard P01 application receipt date (February 1, June 1, or October 1). INQUIRIES Copies of the latest NCI P01 Guidelines can be obtained from the NCI Referral Office at: Referral Officer Division of Extramural Activities National Cancer Institute 6130 Executive Boulevard, Room 636A, MSC 7405 Bethesda, MD 20892-7405 Telephone: (301) 496-3428 FAX: (301) 402-0275 Email: tf12w@nih.gov The Guidelines are also available on the NCI DEA Home Page at http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/awards/P01.pdf Questions related to NCI P01 review may be directed to: David Irwin, Ph.D. Division of Extramural Activities National Cancer Institute 6130 Executive Boulevard, Room 635E, MSC 7405 Bethesda, MD 20892-7405 Telephone: (301) 402-0371 FAX: (301) 496-6497 Email: di4k@nih.gov
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