DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research, Virtual Cancer Center Director Award | W81XWH 20 PRCRP VCCDA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 20 PRCRP VCCDA

The DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) Virtual Cancer Center Director Award (VCCDA) is a funding opportunity from the Department of Defense (administered by the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, USAMRAA) designed to build and run a collaborative, interactive "virtual cancer center" rather than fund a single standalone research project. The central idea is to connect leadership-level cancer researchers with a cohort of early career faculty to study shared mechanisms and themes across different cancers, with a strong emphasis on mentorship, coordinated career development, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. The opportunity was released under Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-20-PRCRP-VCCDA, within CFDA 12.420, and supports science and technology and other research and development activities through either a grant or cooperative agreement mechanism.

The virtual cancer center is structured around a leadership team of two established investigators: a Director and a Deputy Director. Together, they lead and manage the center's scientific direction and its training environment while fostering collaboration across cancer disciplines. The center can include up to nine early career investigators called Scholars, but those Scholars do not apply through this Director Award announcement. Instead, Scholar candidates apply through a separate companion opportunity (W81XWH-20-PRCRP-CDA). In practice, this means the VCCDA application is primarily about proposing an effective leadership and mentoring ecosystem, a plan for integrating multiple Scholar projects, and a strategy for creating productive collaborations that generate broadly relevant insights across cancer types.

A core purpose of the VCCDA is career acceleration and capacity-building for junior faculty. The Director and Deputy Director are expected to actively mentor Scholars alongside the Scholars' own Career Guides, track Scholar progress, help troubleshoot barriers, and create a culture of frequent communication and shared problem-solving. The program explicitly calls for "cross-pollination" among different cancer disciplines, meaning the center should be designed so that ideas, methods, and discoveries in one cancer area can inform work in another. The expected outcome is a group of highly productive, well-networked Scholars who benefit from intensive mentoring, national-level networking, collaborative opportunities, and a strong peer cohort, all within a coordinated virtual center environment.

Administratively, the award is built to support two Principal Investigators (PIs) in a partnered structure. The Director serves as the Initiating PI and handles most of the administrative responsibilities tied to submitting the application. The Deputy Director serves as the Partnering PI and has separate submission requirements, but the scientific and leadership expectations are intentionally balanced. The application is expected to show that both leaders contributed equally to the design and management of the virtual cancer center, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each. Importantly, the Deputy Director is not meant to function as a purely administrative assistant; the announcement emphasizes that both the Director and Deputy Director should meaningfully interact with the Scholars and contribute to their development. If funded, each PI is named on an individual award issued within the recipient organization, reinforcing the shared leadership model.

The opportunity is open to a broad range of applicants (listed as unrestricted eligibility, subject to any additional details in the full announcement). The posted record indicates an anticipated total of one award. The listing does not specify a fixed award ceiling (shown as 0), which typically signals that applicants must refer to the full program announcement for budget expectations, allowable costs, and scope-based funding guidance rather than relying on a single published maximum.

Programmatically, the VCCDA sits within a wider DoD effort to accelerate impactful cancer research, including priorities related to advanced and recurrent disease. The announcement references a Congressionally mandated Metastatic Cancer Task Force and encourages applicants to review its recommendations and propose ideas that align with those recommendations, as long as they also fit within the FY20 PRCRP priorities and the boundaries of the VCCDA mechanism. In other words, the DoD is not only looking for strong mentorship infrastructure and multi-investigator coordination, but also for a center vision that can contribute to clinically and translationally meaningful progress, particularly in areas like metastatic cancer where extending life and improving outcomes remains a major unmet need.

Key dates in the source record include a creation date of March 23, 2020 and an original closing date of August 27, 2020. Overall, this funding opportunity is best understood as support for building a high-functioning virtual center that develops people and connections as much as it advances research, using a two-leader model to coordinate mentoring, collaboration, and integrated scientific progress across multiple cancer areas.

• 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 "DoD Peer Reviewed Cancer Research, Virtual Cancer Center Director 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 Mar 23, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 27, 2020. (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 1 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 20 PRCRP VCCDA

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