Concept Award – HT942526RCRPCA
- Letters of Intent due 16 September 2026
- Up to USD$140,000 over 2 years
- Supports the initial exploration of highly innovative, untested, potentially ground-breaking novel concepts in rare cancers.
- Potential impact may be near-term or long-term but must move beyond a minor advancement and demonstrate the potential to lead to a fundamentally new strategy or approach for rare cancers.
- Must address at least one of the Focus Areas of Biology; Preclinical Research Model; Therapy; or AI/ML Model.
- Preliminary data not required
- Clinical trials not allowed
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526RCRPCA_GG
Idea Development Award – HT942526RCRPIDA
- pre-proposals due 19 August 2026
- Up to USD$490,000 over 3 years
- Supports rare cancer research that is ready for further development and has the potential to yield high-impact findings.
- Must address at least one of the Focus Areas of Biology; Preclinical Research Model; Therapy; or AI/ML Model.
- preliminary data required with disease-specific rationale, including correlative studies to ongoing clinical research; however, supporting data does not have to be in the proposed rare cancer type(s)/subtype(s) under study.
- Clinical trials not allowed
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement –HT942526RCRPIDA_GG
Resource and Community Development Award – HT942526RCRPRCDA
- Pre-proposals due 19 August 2026
- Up to USD$1.12M over 4 years
- Supports the development of clinical or preclinical data sets and research resources
- Applications should develop research platforms that can share resources and knowledge pertaining to available preclinical or clinical research models, molecular pathways and therapeutic approaches.
- Must address at least one of the FY26 RCRP focus areas of Platform Development and AI/ML Model.
- Preliminary data allowed but not required
- Apply here
- Document – Program Announcement – HT942526RCRPRCDA_GG
Focus Areas
- Biology: Identify disease-defining molecular pathways, cell context and microenvironment
- Preclinical Research Model: Develop and validate rare tumor-specific models that can support clinical trial readiness
- Therapy: Identify novel therapeutic strategies, including drug repurposing
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) Model: Establish use of AI and/or ML tools in discovery, preclinical studies, and clinical trial readiness
- Platform Development: Develop platforms, such as tumor tissue repositories with clinical annotation, centralized databanks, patient registries with common data structure, research models, “omics” databases, and longitudinal studies of natural history and treatment response, for types or subtypes of rare cancers to allow sharing of data, biospecimens and resources
