CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Research Program Clinical Translational Research Award | W81XWH 20 OCRP CTRA

Opportunity Information: Apply for W81XWH 20 OCRP CTRA

The CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Research Program (OCRP) Clinical Translational Research Award (CTRA) is a Department of Defense funding opportunity administered through the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity (USAMRAA). It is designed to move ovarian cancer research closer to real-world clinical impact by funding translational, patient-centered studies that are directly tied to a clinical trial. Rather than paying for the day-to-day operations of a trial, the award focuses on the correlative and translational science that can be layered onto a planned, ongoing, or completed clinical trial that is already supported by other funding. This structure is meant to help researchers extract deeper biological and clinical meaning from trial participation, patient samples, and trial data, ultimately improving how ovarian cancer is understood and treated.

At its core, this award supports correlative studies connected to clinical trials, meaning research that uses patient data and biospecimens to answer questions such as why some patients respond to a therapy and others do not, what biological pathways drive resistance, and which markers can predict outcomes. The program emphasizes translational work that targets high-impact problems or clear unmet needs in ovarian cancer, with a strong push toward practical outputs that can shape clinical decision-making. In addition to correlative science, projects that develop or refine clinical endpoints for trials are encouraged, which can include efforts to create, validate, or optimize outcome measures that make trials more informative, efficient, or patient-relevant.

A particularly encouraged focus area is precision medicine and computational approaches. The opportunity highlights the value of identifying individual tumor characteristics and predictive biomarkers, including work that uses advanced analytics, modeling, or bioinformatics to link molecular features to clinical outcomes. Importantly, the language also calls for approaches that work across diverse groups, signaling interest in research that does not only reflect narrow patient populations and that can improve care and outcomes broadly. In practice, competitive applications would likely propose robust strategies for integrating clinical data with molecular profiling, imaging, or other high-dimensional datasets to identify patient- or tumor-specific predictors of response, toxicity, recurrence risk, or survival.

The award comes with several key expectations that shape what applicants must be ready to deliver. First, the application must convincingly demonstrate that the research team has access to the necessary human subjects, specimens, or human-based resources. Because the work is trial-linked, this typically means showing that the relevant patient population is available, enrollment and consent pathways are feasible, and biospecimens or datasets can be obtained and used as proposed. Second, the proposal must include a detailed statistical analysis plan, including power calculations and sample size projections. This is meant to ensure that the study is not exploratory in a way that cannot yield interpretable results, and that the planned analyses have a realistic chance of producing meaningful, decision-informing conclusions.

There are also clear boundaries about what this funding will not support. The award is not intended to fund clinical trial operations, so applicants should not expect support for running the trial itself, such as routine participant visits, clinical care costs, or core trial management that would normally be covered by the primary trial sponsor. Additionally, preclinical animal studies are explicitly not allowed, reinforcing that this mechanism is centered on human-based translational research and clinically anchored questions rather than laboratory animal modeling.

From an administrative standpoint, this opportunity was released under Funding Opportunity Number W81XWH-20-OCRP-CTRA, categorized as discretionary funding, and offered through grant and cooperative agreement mechanisms under CFDA 12.420. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted, meaning a wide range of organizations may apply, subject to any additional eligibility notes in the full announcement. The posting indicates an expected five awards, and while an award ceiling is listed as 0 in the summary data, that typically reflects a posting artifact and would normally be clarified in the full program announcement or budget guidance. The opportunity was created on February 27, 2020, with an original closing date of July 30, 2020.

Overall, the CTRA is best understood as a mechanism for teams who already have a clinical trial context and want to answer the critical translational questions that trials often raise but cannot fully address without dedicated correlative funding. The program is geared toward well-justified, statistically rigorous, human-based studies that can identify biomarkers, validate computational or precision approaches, and improve how clinical trials measure and predict meaningful outcomes for people with ovarian cancer.

• 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 "CDMRP Ovarian Cancer Research Program Clinical Translational Research 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 Feb 27, 2020.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jul 30, 2020. (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 5 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 20 OCRP CTRA

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: