Funding for pre-clinical, translational, and early clinical research with the potential to produce unusually high impact, near-term advancements in melanoma prevention, detection, diagnosis, staging, and treatment.

For the 2020-2021 cycle, MRA seeks proposals in the following areas, which are focused on current unmet clinical needs in melanoma. These areas are of particular interest, will receive special consideration, and can include pre-clinical, translational, clinical, and/or correlative studies:

- Identifying strategies to overcome primary and secondary treatment resistance;

- Developing treatment strategies for difficult-to-treat melanoma subtypes such as acral, mucosal, or uveal melanoma, and/or non-BRAF mutant melanomas including NRAS and NF1 mutants;

- Uncovering novel mechanisms of melanoma initiation and progression in order to improve prevention and early detection strategies, develop early treatment approaches such as adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapies, and identify prognostic biomarkers of high-risk disease/precursor lesions; and

- Developing strategies to prevent and/or treat metastatic disease, including in transit and/or satellite metastases, and leptomeningeal disease.

Types of awards

Young Investigator Award: Scientists within the first four years of their first academic faculty appointment. A mentorship commitment from a senior investigator is required.

Established Investigator Award: Senior investigators, past the initial four years of their first academic faculty appointment. Applicants must hold a full-time faculty appointment at the level of Assistant Professor (or equivalent) or above.

Established Investigator Academic-Industry Partnership Award: These awards are to be co-funded by MRA and an industry partner whose involvement is essential to the project.

Pilot Award: Senior investigators who propose potentially transformative ideas that do not have extensive preliminary data but articulate a clear hypothesis and translational goals

Duration

Young Investigator Award: 3 years

Established Investigator Award: 3 years

Established Investigator Academic-Industry Partnership Award: 3 years

Pilot Award: 2 years

Funding

Young Investigator Award: $75,000 per year for 3 years

Established Investigator Award: $125,000 pr year for 3 years

Established Investigator Academic-Industry Partnership Award: $125,000 pr year for 3 years. Industrial partner must provide funds or in-kind support that matches or exceeds MRA funds.

Pilot Award: $50,000 per year for 2 years

General eligibility requirements:

Principal Investigators (PIs) must hold a full-time faculty appointment at the level of Assistant Professor (or equivalent) or above at an academic or other non-profit research institution within or outside the United States. Please note, however, that the ASTRO-MRA Young Investigator Award is limited to U.S. applicants only, and the Rosetrees Trust-MRA Young Investigator is limited to UK and Israel-based applicants only.

PIs must be able to show clear evidence of an independent research program.

If previously funded by MRA, applicant must be up-to-date on all reporting requirements.

Fellows or those in other training or research support positions are not eligible to apply.

Individuals employed by state or federal government agencies may participate in research proposals as non-funded collaborators, but may not apply for MRA funding.

Investigators need not be specifically trained in melanoma research; however, they should be working in an environment capable of conducting high-quality, high-impact melanoma research.

An investigator may serve as PI on only one proposal submitted to MRA for any of the award mechanisms in this cycle. This includes any Special Opportunity Awards.

Mentors for Young Investigator Award applicants may serve as a PI on a separate proposal this cycle; however, that proposal must represent a distinct hypothesis from the Young Investigator's proposal.

Multiple applications will be accepted from a single institution, provided that each application has a different PI and represents a distinct hypothesis.

Applicants must utilize the proposalCENTRAL online application tool at https://proposalcentral.com/

A detailed list of the documents to provide is given in page 9 of the RFP document.