DOD Melanoma Team Science Award | W81XWH 21 MRP TSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 21 MRP TSA

The DOD Melanoma Team Science Award (TSA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity under the Melanoma Research Program (MRP) designed to push melanoma research forward through true multidisciplinary collaboration. It supports hypothesis-driven projects that can span basic, translational, and other research stages, as long as the work directly addresses the FY21 MRP overarching Challenge Statement and includes at least one of the required FY21 Focus Areas identified in the program announcement. The central idea is that melanoma problems with stubborn knowledge gaps are more likely to be solved when investigators from different disciplines jointly plan and execute a single, unified research effort rather than working in parallel.

A defining feature of this award is the emphasis on team science as the core mechanism for impact. Applicants are expected to assemble a team whose members bring clearly different expertise, perspectives, and methods, and to show how those differences create synergy that speeds progress in ways that independent projects would not. The project should be designed around realistic near-term objectives that the team believes can be achieved within the award period, and the application must clearly lay out how the collaborating investigators will integrate their contributions into one coherent plan. While basic research is allowed, the TSA is explicitly mission-driven: the team is expected to explain how the proposed work ultimately connects to patient benefit, meaning the relevance to the melanoma patient community must be credible and explicit even if the immediate experiments are mechanistic or preclinical.

Structurally, the TSA uses a partnership model where investigators co-develop one shared project, but each participating partner is recognized as a Principal Investigator and must submit a separate application. Each PI is named on their own individual award, but the project is judged on the combined plan and the degree of coordination across the team. This setup is meant to enforce genuine collaboration and accountability, with each PI contributing a distinct and necessary part of the overall approach.

In terms of allowable research, the TSA can support studies using animal models, human subjects, and human anatomical substances, and it can include development or use of relevant preclinical models when those models are essential to answering the hypothesis. However, the award includes several clear boundaries. Clinical trials are not allowed, although correlative studies (for example, analyses tied to existing patient samples or clinical datasets that do not constitute an interventional trial) are permitted. The opportunity also discourages certain common but broad discovery approaches; it is not intended to fund high-throughput screening efforts or large-scale sequencing as the main activity. In addition, it is not aimed at studying established late-stage disease models as a primary emphasis, and it is not meant to focus on evaluating the clinical utility of PD-1 in combination with other therapeutics. At the same time, the program signals interest in rare melanomas and supports studying disease biology across the full continuum from initiation through distant macrometastasis, as long as the work fits the Challenge Statement and Focus Area requirements.

Administratively, this FY21 opportunity was issued by the Department of Defense, Department of the Army, through USAMRAA, with Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-21-MRP-TSA and CFDA 12.420. It was offered as a grant and/or cooperative agreement mechanism, open to unrestricted applicant types (subject to any specific eligibility clarifications in the full announcement). The original posting date was May 7, 2021, with an original closing date of August 26, 2021. The listing indicated an expectation of about three awards, and the award ceiling was shown as 0 in the source entry (which typically means applicants need to rely on the full announcement for budget constraints or that the ceiling was not specified in that summary record). Overall, the program is geared toward tightly integrated, hypothesis-based melanoma research teams that can justify why their combined expertise is essential and how their results could plausibly move the field toward better outcomes for patients.

• 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 Melanoma Team Science 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 May 07, 2021.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 26, 2021. (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 3 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 21 MRP TSA

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