The DOD Congressionally-Directed Medical Research Program (CDMRP) released three program announcements for Rare Cancer Research Program (RCRP). Click here to read more about these funding opportunities.
The RCRP’s vision is to greatly improve outcomes for people with rare cancers through discovery, community building, and expansion of knowledge across the cancer landscape. The RCRP’s mission is to elevate rare cancers research to enable clinically impactful discoveries for the benefit of active duty Service members, Veterans, military beneficiaries, and/or the American public.
In FY20, the Defense Appropriations Act provided $7.5 million to the Department of Defense (DoD) to support rare cancers research, thus establishing the RCRP. The rare cancers research topic area was first introduced as a Congressionally directed research topic under the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Program (PRCRP) in FY19, although the PRCRP has historically funded research on rare cancers since FY09. In addition to the PRCRP, the CDMRP also manages seven cancer-specific programs as directed by Congress for research in breast cancer, kidney cancer, lung cancer, melanoma, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer. Various sub-types of these cancers, based on their site-specific origin classifications, are rare in nature. Applicants are allowed to submit applications related to those sub-types to either the RCRP or other relevant CDMRP cancer research programs. However, applicants are not permitted to submit the same application to the RCRP and other CDMRP programs in the same fiscal year. In NF, malignant peripheral nerve sheet tumors (MPNST) belong to the sarcoma family of rare cancers and is a rare type of sarcoma that could be considered for this program.
