CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Clinical Translational Research Award | W81XWH 21 OCRP CTRA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 21 OCRP CTRA

The CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Clinical Translational Research Award (CTRA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity run through the Ovarian Cancer Research Program (OCRP) and administered by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). It is designed specifically to move promising ovarian cancer insights closer to real-world patient impact by supporting translational, clinically anchored research rather than basic laboratory or animal work. The emphasis is on work that can meaningfully inform patient care, treatment decisions, and clinical trial strategy by generating or validating clinically relevant evidence.

At its core, this award supports correlative studies linked to a clinical trial. In practice, that means the research must be associated with a planned, ongoing, or completed human clinical trial that is funded through other sources, since the award is not meant to pay for the operational costs of running the trial itself (for example, routine trial management, enrollment operations, or standard clinical procedures). Instead, the award targets the translational add-ons that often determine whether a trial truly advances the field: biomarker studies, analyses of patient specimens, tumor profiling, immune monitoring, molecular characterization, response and resistance investigations, and other human-based studies that help explain why a therapy works, for whom it works, and under what conditions.

The program is looking for translational research that addresses high-impact problems or clear unmet needs in ovarian cancer. Applications aligned with an OCRP priority area are especially encouraged, with a notable emphasis on precision medicine and computational approaches. The goal in this priority is to identify patient- and tumor-specific characteristics and predictive biomarkers, and to do so across diverse groups, so that patient care can be better tailored and outcomes can be improved. This highlights an interest in work that leverages modern analytic strategies (such as integrative multi-omics, machine learning, or other computational methods) to connect individual tumor biology with clinically actionable predictions, while also paying attention to diversity and representativeness in the studied populations.

While the award is centered on correlative science, it also explicitly encourages projects that develop clinical endpoints for clinical trials. This can include efforts to refine, validate, or propose endpoints that better capture patient benefit, biological activity, or early signals of response, particularly when standard endpoints are not sufficient or are slow to read out. The intent is to strengthen the clinical trial ecosystem in ovarian cancer by improving how trials measure meaningful outcomes and how they translate biological findings into decisions.

A key requirement is that applicants must be able to show the necessary human resources are truly available and accessible. This includes documenting access to the relevant human subject population and/or appropriate biospecimens and human-based resources needed to perform the proposed analyses. In other words, reviewers will expect credible evidence that the study can be executed as proposed, including the ability to obtain samples, clinical data, and follow-up information in a timely and compliant way.

The application must also include a detailed statistical analysis plan, including a power analysis tied to sample size projections. This is not a superficial requirement: the proposal needs to show that the planned number of participants or specimens is sufficient to detect meaningful effects and support interpretable conclusions. The program is signaling that it wants studies designed to produce clear, actionable outcomes rather than exploratory work that is underpowered or unlikely to provide definitive answers.

Finally, the scope is strictly human-centered: preclinical animal studies are not allowed under this mechanism. The opportunity is positioned firmly in the clinical-translational space, focusing on research that directly leverages human trial contexts, human samples, and clinically relevant endpoints to accelerate progress against ovarian cancer.

Administrative details from the source information include the funding opportunity number W81XWH-21-OCRP-CTRA, categorized as discretionary funding, with awards made as grants and/or cooperative agreements under the Department of Defense (Department of the Army, USAMRAA). The CFDA number listed is 12.420. Eligibility is described as unrestricted (open to any type of entity), subject to any additional clarifications in the full notice. The opportunity was created February 8, 2021, with an original closing date of July 8, 2021. The expected number of awards was 4, and the award ceiling is listed as 0 in the source data, which typically indicates that the ceiling was not specified in that summary field and would need to be confirmed in the full program announcement or budget guidance.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Clinical Translational Research Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on Feb 08, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 08, 2021. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 4 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

Apply for W81XWH 21 OCRP CTRA

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