Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF), along with the American Association for Cancer Research, call upon the cancer research community to submit Letters of Intent for a new Dream Team dedicated to prostate cancer research.
The SU2C-PCF Prostate Dream Team Translational Cancer Research Grant will provide funding of up to $10 million over a three-year period for a cancer research project that will address therapeutic interventions for advanced prostate cancer with special emphasis on metastatic disease, and deliver near-term patient benefit through investigation by a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, synergistic Dream Team of expert investigators. Proposals for the SU2C-PCF Prostate Dream Team Translational Cancer Research Grant must include plans indicating how the work will be translated into the clinic.
To maximize creativity, innovation and collaboration, the Dream Team must include laboratory and clinical researchers, senior and/or young investigators and senior scientists who have not worked together in the past, as well as patient advocates. This Dream Team will span multiple disciplines and utilize the new tools of modern biology to attack research questions in a coordinated way. Mechanisms to foster collaboration within and among the Dream Teams should be employed — an approach that promotes the sharing of information and a goal-oriented focus on measurable milestones of progress.
SU2C and PCF believe that this unique Dream Team model will advance scientific research in the interests of both today’s cancer patients and those who may develop cancer in the future.
A SU2C-PCF Joint Scientific Advisory Committee (JSAC) will conduct a unique, interactive, rapid and rigorous evaluation of the applications via a multi-step scientific review process. The committee is chaired by Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., institute professor at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is co-chaired by SU2C representative William G. Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., the Marion I. Knott director and professor of oncology, and director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, and PCF representative Howard R. Soule, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief science officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. The JSAC is comprised of highly accomplished senior laboratory researchers and physician-scientists, as well as advocates.
Since the launch of Stand Up To Cancer in 2008, the AACR has played an integral role as SU2C’s scientific partner by providing scientific leadership, expert peer review and grants administration. The AACR is responsible for administering these grants and provides ongoing scientific oversight to ensure that progress is being made. The AACR will work closely with PCF, the world’s leading philanthropic organization funding and accelerating prostate cancer research.
