DoD Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Development Award | HT9425 23 BCRP TBCCDA 2

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT9425 23 BCRP TBCCDA 2

The DoD Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Development Award (FY23) is a planning-and-launch mechanism from the Department of Defense (administered through the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, USAMRAA) designed to help teams get a major, multi-institutional breast cancer research consortium ready for a future full-scale competition. The intent is not to fund a mature consortium at full operating capacity yet, but to give applicants dedicated time and support to bring the right people together, build the structure that will let the consortium function smoothly, and produce the early evidence needed to justify and strengthen a later application to the Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award (a separate, future funding opportunity, contingent on funds). In other words, this development award is meant to move a promising idea and a loosely connected set of collaborators into a well-organized consortium with shared plans, shared tools, and preliminary results that show the approach is feasible and integrated.

A central feature of this opportunity is building the consortium framework itself. Applicants are expected to develop the infrastructure of a multi-institutional research team that intentionally includes scientists, clinicians, and breast cancer consumer advocates. The emphasis is on forming appropriate collaborations and clearly defining how the different institutions and disciplines will integrate their work rather than operating as disconnected projects. The award supports the creation of practical management components such as research management and administrative management structures, communication plans that keep partners aligned, and an intellectual property plan to address ownership, data sharing, and downstream commercialization or implementation considerations. Alongside these organizational elements, the award also supports generating preliminary data that can serve as proof of concept and/or demonstrate how multiple project components will fit together, acquiring key research resources needed to get the consortium positioned for larger-scale work, and developing a framework for the statistical analyses that will be necessary to evaluate outcomes in a rigorous and coordinated way across the team.

Breast cancer consumer advocates are not optional or symbolic participants under this mechanism; they must be active participants in both the development and execution of the award. That requirement signals that applicants should plan for advocates to have meaningful roles in shaping priorities, ensuring patient-centered relevance, and informing how the consortium communicates, designs studies, and interprets impact. This is aligned with the consortium-development goal: the DoD is effectively asking applicants to demonstrate early that the team can operate as a cohesive, stakeholder-informed enterprise, not just a collection of labs.

Structurally, the opportunity is offered as either a cooperative agreement or a grant under the DoD breast cancer research portfolio (CFDA 12.420) within the broader category of science, technology, and research and development. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to many entity types, subject to any additional eligibility clarifications contained in the full announcement. For FY23, the agency anticipated making one award. The posting lists an award ceiling of 0, which typically indicates that applicants must rely on the program announcement for specific budget guidance or that the ceiling is not provided in the summary field, so the detailed announcement would be the authoritative source for allowable costs and budget limits.

This funding opportunity also sets expectations around how applicants position themselves relative to the future, full consortium award. Recipients of the development award are expected to submit an application to compete for the full Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award in a future fiscal year (if offered and funded). At the same time, the DoD makes clear that receiving a development award is not a prerequisite for applying to the full award later, so teams can pursue the full consortium mechanism without having held this planning award. There is also a key restriction for FY23 leadership roles: an investigator may be named as the Consortium Director on an application to either the development award or the full consortium award mechanism, but not both in the same cycle. Details about the full Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Award are provided under a separate program announcement (HT9425-23-BCRP-TBCCA-2), reinforcing that this development award is its own distinct pathway focused on readiness, integration, and early validation rather than full execution at scale.

Administrative details from the source summary include the opportunity number HT9425-23-BCRP-TBCCDA-2, a creation date of May 2, 2023, and an original closing date of August 8, 2023, indicating it was a time-limited FY23 competition. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as seed and scaffolding support for a large, transformative consortium effort: it funds the hard early work of building a functional multi-institution partnership with advocates at the table, aligning governance and communication, assembling resources, and producing preliminary evidence and analysis plans that make a future full consortium application credible and competitive.

• 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 Breast Cancer, Transformative Breast Cancer Consortium Development 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 02, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 08, 2023. (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 1 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 HT9425 23 BCRP TBCCDA 2

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