DoD Kidney Cancer, Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators – Leadership Award | HT942524KCRPAKCILA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT942524KCRPAKCILA

The DoD Kidney Cancer Research Program (KCRP) Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators (AKCI) Leadership Award is a Department of Defense funding opportunity focused on running and strengthening a virtual career development academy for early-career kidney cancer scientists and clinician-researchers. AKCI was launched in FY19 to build national research capacity in kidney cancer by pairing junior faculty Early-Career Scholars (ECS) with experienced Designated Mentors, creating a structured environment for intensive mentoring, networking, collaboration, and professional growth. The academy is designed to help early-career investigators become independent, highly productive kidney cancer researchers while also increasing collaboration across institutions and disciplines. The academy currently includes multiple ECS-Mentor pairs across different institutions, an Academy Director, and ongoing participation from graduates in annual meetings, with a planned transition as some scholars graduate and new cohorts enter.

This specific FY24 opportunity is not aimed at funding an individual investigator project in the traditional sense; it is soliciting applications to select the next AKCI leadership team: an Academy Director (the Initiating Principal Investigator) and a Deputy Director (the Partnering Principal Investigator). These two leaders may be based at different institutions and are expected to begin their responsibilities no later than October 2025. The core expectation is that both leaders are established kidney cancer researchers with a strong, proven record of mentoring and developing early-career investigators, and that they can clearly describe how they will drive collaboration, evaluate scholar progress, and maintain a high-functioning academy community. The program emphasizes that both PIs must be substantively involved with scholars and mentors; simply providing administrative oversight does not meet the intent. Each PI will receive a separate award to their organization if funded, with separate reporting and administrative requirements, but the application must show equal and meaningful input from both leaders and clearly define their complementary roles.

The leadership team is responsible for operating AKCI as a structured, interactive, and collaborative training platform over the scholars four-year periods of performance. Key duties include serving as a resource to all scholars and mentors; actively facilitating regular communication and collaboration among academy members; and developing clear assessment criteria to evaluate both research progress and career progression toward sustained independence in kidney cancer research. Leadership is also expected to provide high-quality, constructive critique that strengthens both the scholars work and the mentor-mentee relationships, and to expand scholars visibility and professional opportunities in the broader kidney cancer ecosystem, including engagement with conferences, peer review activities, and other leadership-facing roles where appropriate.

A distinctive requirement of this Leadership Award is that the academy leaders must also conduct collaborative kidney cancer pilot project(s) that directly include academy scholars. These pilot efforts are intended to function as collaboration catalysts within AKCI and should have credible potential to impact kidney cancer research and/or benefit patients and survivors. The announcement gives examples such as extended statistical or bioinformatics analyses performed with scholars, large-scale meta-analyses across human or animal datasets, or providing access to critical biorepositories or animal models that increase rigor and expand what scholars can test. In other words, the leadership award blends career development infrastructure with real collaborative research activity that tangibly links scholars together.

The opportunity also places strong emphasis on structured convening and community building. The academy leadership must plan and host an annual one-day workshop and a biennial multi-day workshop where scholar-mentor pairs and academy graduates present research, exchange knowledge, and intentionally develop collaborations. Scholars are expected to cover their own travel costs for in-person meetings. In addition, the leadership team must create formal mechanisms for stakeholder engagement by establishing a Patient Advocacy Panel that includes patient advocates and Veteran(s) to ensure the academy stays grounded in patient community needs. They must also establish a Designated Mentor Panel to help drive collaboration across mentors, scholars, and academy leadership.

Another goal is to connect AKCI with other KCRP-supported talent pipelines. The leadership team is expected to identify and offer opportunities for AKCI scholars and mentors to engage with KCRP Postdoctoral and Clinical Fellowship Awardees (including FY24 awardees and future cohorts). At minimum, FY24 Postdoctoral and Clinical Fellowship Awardees must be included in at least one meeting of the FY24 AKCI, with those fellowship investigators paying their own travel using funds built into their fellowship awards. More broadly, the leadership team is expected to create recurring engagement opportunities such as invitations to seminar series and in-person meetings, building a wider kidney cancer research community across career stages.

Several programmatic boundaries and eligibility rules matter. Clinical trials are not allowed under this funding opportunity, using the federal definition of a clinical trial (prospective assignment to an intervention to measure its effects on health-related outcomes). However, clinical research that is observational in nature is allowed, including studies using human data or specimens, diagnostic or detection research (including biomarker or imaging work), epidemiology, outcomes research, health services research, and related efforts, as long as they do not evaluate an intervention for safety or efficacy in a prospective trial framework. The announcement also notes an application review requirement: applicants must complete an invited oral presentation as part of the review process, as detailed in the full program instructions. Ineligibility is also specifically called out for certain Designated Mentors: Designated Mentors on FY24 AKCI Early-Career Scholar applications, and Designated Mentors on open FY19 through FY23 AKCI Early-Career Scholar awards (except those graduating in 2024), cannot apply for this leadership award.

From a funding and administrative standpoint, awards will be issued as cooperative agreements, meaning the DoD CDMRP expects substantial programmatic involvement during the performance period. This involvement can include participation in a Steering Committee and recommendations regarding continued funding based on progress, cooperation, accrual where applicable (such as data or patient/data resources), and research quality, along with compliance and reporting. The anticipated combined direct costs for the full period of performance are capped at $1,500,000 for the leadership award effort as a whole. The program expects to fund about one leadership team (one Initiating PI plus one Partnering PI), with an estimated total program allotment around $2.4 million to support that single application package, contingent on federal funding availability and the outcomes of peer and programmatic review. The original closing date listed is September 19, 2024, and awards are expected to be made no later than September 30, 2025.

Finally, applicants are encouraged (when relevant to their approach and consistent with KCRP priorities) to align with broader CDMRP emphasis areas such as nuclear medicine innovations for improved diagnosis and targeted treatment, womens health and sex as a biological variable, recommendations from the Metastatic Cancer Task Force for accelerating translational impact in advanced and recurrent disease, and rigorous study design principles that improve reproducibility (randomization, blinding, sample-size estimation, and transparent data handling). The announcement also strongly encourages military service involvement and collaborations spanning academia, industry, military, VA, and other federal partners, especially when those partnerships provide unique resources, infrastructure, or access to populations relevant to Service Members, Veterans, and their families.

• The Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Kidney Cancer, Academy of Kidney Cancer Investigators – Leadership 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 2024-06-26.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-09-19. (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 2 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

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