Planning for a National Center for Particle Beam Radiation Therapy Research (P20) | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The NIH National Cancer Institute funding opportunity PAR-13-096 supports planning activities to set up a National Center for Particle Beam Radiation Therapy (PBRT) Research. The key point is that this grant is not meant to build or pay for a particle therapy clinical facility. Instead, it funds the upfront planning needed to create a research center that will operate alongside a separate, independently funded, sustainable clinical PBRT facility. The envisioned end state is a research center that can conduct clinically relevant studies using proton therapy and heavier ion beams, including (but not limited to) carbon ion beams, and that is positioned to compete successfully for larger, longer-term funding to actually run a specialized national research program in clinical PBRT.

The FOA is designed to help institutions assemble the full set of resources needed to do strong basic, translational, and clinical research that complements a working PBRT clinic. That includes building a coordinated multidisciplinary team and mapping out the expertise and infrastructure required to carry out a modern particle therapy research agenda. The announcement explicitly emphasizes cross-cutting collaboration among physicists, engineers, biologists, and physicians, reflecting the fact that particle therapy research spans beam physics and dosimetry, treatment planning and delivery engineering, radiobiology, and clinical trial design and execution. On the facilities side, the FOA highlights the types of supporting research capabilities that may need to be incorporated or strengthened, such as cell culture laboratories and vivarium resources for preclinical work, as well as specialized clinical support units like pediatric anesthesia capabilities, which can be essential for safely treating and studying certain patient populations in a particle therapy setting.

The overall objective of the planning effort is to produce a credible, integrated blueprint for a national research resource centered on PBRT. In practical terms, applicants are expected to use the planning period to define the center structure, governance, collaborations, research focus areas, and operational needs; identify and close gaps in expertise or shared resources; and lay out how the research program will interface with the independently funded clinical facility. The FOA frames this as capacity-building for a research center that can deliver high-quality, clinically meaningful work rather than isolated projects, and it makes clear that the planning should be grounded in the realities of conducting research in an active particle therapy clinical environment.

Administratively, this is a discretionary grant mechanism in the NIH portfolio, using the P20 activity code, which is typically associated with exploratory or developmental center planning. The opportunity falls under the health and education funding activity categories and is linked to CFDA 93.395 (Cancer Treatment Research). The award ceiling is listed as $500,000, and there is no cost sharing or matching requirement, which lowers barriers for applicants who can demonstrate strong institutional commitment and access to an appropriate PBRT clinical platform funded through other means.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations. Eligible applicants include public and state-controlled institutions of higher education, private institutions of higher education, nonprofit organizations with and without 501(c)(3) status, state and local governments (including counties, cities or townships, and special district governments), federally recognized tribal governments and other tribal organizations, and for-profit organizations (including small businesses and other for-profit entities outside the small business category). The FOA also specifies eligibility for a range of mission-focused higher education institutions, including HBCUs, Hispanic-serving institutions, Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities, and Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, as well as AANAPISI-designated organizations. Foreign institutions and non-U.S. components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply, although foreign components as defined under NIH policy are permitted, meaning applicants may include certain international elements if they fit NIH definitions and rules, but the applicant organization itself must be domestic.

In terms of timing and lifecycle, the opportunity was posted January 28, 2013, with an original closing date of January 21, 2014, and an archive date of November 17, 2013. The record also lists dates associated with creation and closing that reflect the historical status of the announcement. While those dates indicate this particular FOA is archived, the summary still matters because it shows what NCI was looking to catalyze: an organized national-scale PBRT research center concept that leverages an existing or separately financed clinical particle therapy facility and builds the team science, shared infrastructure planning, and program design needed to compete for subsequent, operational center-level funding.

The simplest way to think about PAR-13-096 is that it pays for the intellectual and organizational work of designing a PBRT research center that can function as a national resource. It supports planning a program that spans laboratory radiobiology and engineering through clinical studies, all anchored to a real clinical particle therapy facility that is already funded outside the grant. The intended outcome is not a constructed building or purchased accelerator, but a well-justified, well-governed, and realistically resourced center plan that is ready to move into full-scale implementation once operational funding is obtained.

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