Frequently Asked Questions

To potential applicants: We appreciate your interest in the Consortium on Translational Research in Early Detection of Liver Cancer FOAs and we hope that you and your team will choose to submit an application. To maximize your chances of success, we have provided answers to the questions that were submitted to the NCI Program via email and during the September 26 pre-application webinar, assuming that these questions could be of interest to many additional potential applicants. For additional questions or clarifications, we encourage you to contact the NCI scientific staff mentioned in the Consortium on Translational Research in Early Detection of Liver Cancer FOAs.

RFA-CA-22-031

I am trying to clarify a question for RFA-CA-22-031 regarding travel for the budget. Can you please clarify if the contact PI will be required to attend the Planning and Steering Committee meetings?
At least 2 senior investigators need to attend the annual Steering Committee meeting. If the award is an MPI, this could be 2 of the MPIs, although we would like to have all the PIs especially the contact PI to attend the meetings. If it is not an MPI, the contact PI should attend with one Co-Investigator.
Is this similar to an R01 application, in terms of pilot data, with minimum feasibility?
Yes, preliminary data is needed to determine the feasibility of what is being proposed in the application. This is related to the potential Translational aspects of the research that you are proposing.
Could you clarify if the page limits are going to be 12 pages for the strategy or 30 pages?
For the RFA-CA-22-031, the research strategy must not exceed 30 pages. While for RFA-CA-22-032, the research strategy is 12 pages.
Question on specimen resources – are resources limited for proposing prospective studies or are the limited resources for identifying new patients?
Justification for putting that in was twofold. 1, is that we do not want to have sites funded with their sole purpose is just to recruit patients for case/control studies or prospectively collection of samples. The goal is to have a Translational aspect(s) to all the proposed research. We are asking that sites interested in submitting an application for this RFA to also consider a prospective study with LiRAD3/LiRADS4 patients to determine if these indeterminate nodules progress to liver cancer or remain stable. This would be a prospective study. There are limited resources available so that each potential site needs to determine how many patients it can enroll for a prospective study. For example, if the consortium comes together and all the sites agree to enroll a total of 500 patients, and there are 5 sites, then the enrollment would be 100 or maybe 50 patients per site. Overall, the investigators need to decide how many patients they will recruit and how many samples will be collected. Second point, if the investigator putting together a proposal related to discovery or pre-validation and then need a large number of samples to complete a validation study, they can look to other resources that are available outside the consortium. The consortium will not be able to recruit that many patients for a validation study within the 5-year timeframe of the RFA.

For any further administrative questions, letter of intent and TRC FOA-related inquiries, please contact: Matthew Young, Ph.D.  at youngma@mail.nih.gov.

RFA-CA-22-032

I would like to confirm whether or not the maximum allowable budget for this opportunity is $400,000 (directs) per year or over the course of the 5-year project period.

Application budget should not exceed $400,000 per year in direct costs.

Could you clarify if the page limits are going to be 12 pages for the strategy or 30 pages?
For the RFA-CA-22-031, the research strategy must not exceed 30 pages. While for RFA-CA-22-032, the research strategy is 12 pages.

For any further administrative questions, letter of intent and TRC FOA-related inquiries,, please contact: Guillermo Marquez, Ph.D. at marquezg@mail.nih.gov.