The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support the validation of molecular/cellular/imaging markers and assays for cancer detection, diagnosis, prognosis, monitoring, and prediction of response or resistance to treatment, as well as markers for cancer prevention and control. This FOA also includes the validation of pharmacodynamic markers and markers of toxicity. Applicants should have assays that work on human samples and whose importance is well justified for development into clinical assays. As chemotherapies and/or radiation therapies are increasingly combined with immunotherapies to enhance durability of anti-cancer responses, multiple assays for measuring multiple markers, including immune markers, can be developed and validated simultaneously.
The UH2 phase of this FOA supports analytical validation of assays for these markers that must be achieved within 2 years before assays may undergo clinical validation. The UH3 phase of this FOA supports clinical validation of established assays for up to 3 years using specimens from retrospective or prospective clinical trials or studies. This FOA may be used to validate existing assays for use in other cancer clinical trials, observational studies, or population studies. Efforts to harmonize clinical laboratory tests, including investigation into the performance and reproducibility of assays across multiple clinical laboratories, are also appropriate for this funding opportunity. Projects proposed for this FOA will require multi-disciplinary interaction and collaboration among scientific investigators, oncologists, statisticians, and clinical laboratory scientists. This FOA is not intended to support early-stage development of technology or the conduct of clinical trials, but is intended for validation of assays to the point where they could be integrated into clinical trials/studies as investigational assays. Investigators responding to this FOA must address both UH2 and UH3 phases.