DoD Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award

The FY23 Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award is designed to support collaborations and ideas that will transform the lives of individuals with, and/or at risk for, breast cancer and will significantly accelerate progress toward ending breast cancer. Applicants must bring together different perspectives to develop new paradigms that will solve fundamental yet overarching problems in breast cancer. This award requires a team-based approach by a consortium of exceptional researchers and advocates, whose collaborative efforts will make a transformative impact in breast cancer. The transformation intended by the consortium must be in people’s lives, and not in the healthcare or research system.

This funding opportunity is a separate mechanism from the Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Development Award which is new for FY23 and is intended to provide successful applicants the time and resources needed to bring investigators and breast cancer advocates together to establish a consortium framework and conduct preliminary research to support application to a future, full Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award (pending availability of funds). For FY23, investigators may be named as Consortium Director on an application submitted to either (but not both) of these mechanisms. It is not necessary to receive a development award in order to apply for the current funding opportunity or anticipated full consortium awards in the future. Detailed information on the FY23 Transformative Breast Cancer Development Consortium Award is available under a separate program announcement (HT945-23-BCRP-TBCCDA).

For the FY23 Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award, the consortium should have at least four, but no more than five, project teams, each investigating different projects under a central hypothesis. No more than two project teams may be based at one institution. Each team’s work must be integrated within the consortium so that every component is working toward the consortium’s central hypothesis. Note: This award is not intended to replace, supplement, duplicate, or compete with other collaborative research efforts, such as the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs), and it should not represent a collection of related Program Project grants or subprojects.

The proposed consortium’s overall work is expected to be innovative. In addition, the Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award will include funds for “seed projects” to pursue brand new, high-risk/high-reward concepts that arise from the work, during the award period.

The Breast Cancer Landscape describes the reality of breast cancer and identifies overarching challenges to progress the field. Research funded under this award mechanism should result in answers that will fundamentally and significantly transform and disrupt the present landscape .

Applications submitted to the Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award must include the following:

· Research that includes truly innovative and brand-new, paradigm-shifting work in breast cancer that will address vital issues in a unique way. The issues may be one (or more) of the FY23 BCRP Overarching Challenges or, with justification, may be a different issue that meets the intent of the award mechanism and addresses the mission of ending breast cancer. If the application identifies a different fundamental issue, it must be coupled with at least one of the FY23 BCRP Overarching Challenges.

· Research that includes different disciplines that come together to address ending breast cancer with an ecologic approach. The consortium’s proposed research must look at all aspects of the disease and bring together these different perspectives into one overarching plan for a deep, definitive dive into the FY23 BCRP Overarching Challenge(s) or other fundamental issue identified in the application. The plan also should include issues related to the hypothesis that have not been previously addressed or answered.

· A plan that describes in detail the integration across the consortium in all aspects, including administration, logistics, and substance. Applications must describe the substantive integration across and among teams that are necessary for the work. The required communication plan and administrative management plan will not suffice to show integration, nor will identifying individual team members who will cross teams. A detailed explanation of the substantive research processes that will be integrated is required.

Synergistic, highly integrated, multidisciplinary, and multi-institutional research teams of leading scientists, clinicians, and consumer advocates must be assembled into a consortium to address a major problem in a way that could not be accomplished by a single investigator or group. While the project teams are made up of different groups, each with its own Principal Investigator (PI), the teams must be working on the major problem identified in the Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award application and under the leadership of the Consortium Director. The research proposed in Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award applications may include phase 1 clinical trials and collaborations with pharmaceutical or biotechnology industry scientists and/or companies, as appropriate. However, a clinical trial is not required, and the primary thrust of the application should not be a clinical trial.