DoD Lung Cancer Research Program Career Development Award | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The DoD Lung Cancer Research Program Career Development Award (CDA) is a funding opportunity from the Department of Defense (DOD-AMRAA) designed to help early-career investigators build independent, long-term research careers in lung cancer. The award’s central purpose is career development through doing meaningful, discovery-oriented research while being actively guided by an established mentor in the lung cancer field. In practice, it is meant to give a new independent principal investigator (PI) the combination of resources, structured mentorship, and professional development needed to become a productive leader in lung cancer research.

A defining feature of this program is that it targets investigators who have already reached an independent faculty-level stage, but are still early enough in their careers to benefit from intensive mentoring and protected research time. Applicants must be research scientists or physician-scientists within five years of their first faculty appointment (or an equivalent independent position). The program is explicitly oriented toward people who intend to remain in lung cancer research, so applications are expected to reflect a clear commitment to that career path rather than a short-term project interest.

Mentorship is not a formality in this award; it is one of the core requirements. The mentor must be an experienced lung cancer researcher with a strong track record of peer-reviewed funding and publications specifically in lung cancer. Beyond credentials, the mentor must show a real commitment to developing the PI’s career, which typically means helping shape the research direction, providing scientific guidance, creating access to collaborations and resources, and supporting the PI’s progression toward research independence and competitiveness for future funding.

Because the award is structured as a career-building mechanism, a formal Career Development Plan is required and must be developed with input from the mentor. This plan should spell out, in a concrete and organized way, how the PI will gain the skills, expertise, and scientific maturity needed to work at the forefront of lung cancer research. It should also explain how the PI will expand their capabilities through training, technical skill acquisition, exposure to new methodologies, networking, and other professional development activities. Importantly, the PI’s institution must demonstrate commitment by guaranteeing at least 40 percent protected time for the PI to conduct lung cancer research during the award period, with the announcement emphasizing that more protected time is strongly preferred. This protected time requirement signals that the program expects genuine, sustained effort on research and career growth, not work squeezed in around unrelated responsibilities.

From a research standpoint, the CDA emphasizes impactful projects with a discovery focus. The opportunity does not require preliminary data, which lowers a common barrier for early investigators proposing innovative directions. Even without preliminary results, the application must still present logical reasoning and a solid scientific rationale, showing that the ideas are well-founded, feasible, and likely to produce meaningful advances. The program’s impact standard is high: proposals should aim for work that could materially accelerate progress toward reducing or eliminating deaths from lung cancer, whether by opening new biological insights, identifying new targets, improving detection or stratification approaches, or otherwise shifting the field forward.

The opportunity also places strong weight on relevance to military beneficiaries. Applicants are expected to clearly explain how the proposed research will matter to Service members, Veterans, and their families. In alignment with that priority, submissions from and partnerships with military treatment facilities, military laboratories, and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers and research labs are strongly encouraged. This emphasis reflects the program’s broader mission to support research that addresses the needs of military-connected populations while still advancing the overall lung cancer research landscape.

Administratively, this opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-16-LCRP-CDA) was posted April 11, 2016, with a closing date of September 14, 2016. The funding instrument types include grants and cooperative agreements, the activity category is science and technology research and development, and it is listed under CFDA 12.420. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning a wide range of organization types may apply, subject to any additional eligibility clarifications in the full announcement. The announcement anticipated making about three awards, underscoring that it is competitive and likely to favor applications that combine a strong, well-justified scientific concept with a credible mentorship team, a thoughtful career development roadmap, institutional commitment to protected time, and a clear connection to benefits for military and Veteran communities.

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Previous opportunity: DoD Lung Cancer Research Program Clinical Exploration Award

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