Deadline: April 8, 2025
Description
The inaugural AACR-Ocular Melanoma Foundation Miriam Counts Innovation and Discovery Grants is a new grant mechanism that seeks to stimulate creative approaches to translate basic research into new treatment options for ocular/uveal melanoma.
*Applicants must be AACR Active members. Nonmembers interested in this grant opportunity must submit a satisfactory application for AACR Active membership by the Application deadline.
Applications are invited from researchers currently in the field as well as investigators with experience in other areas of cancer or biomedical research who have promising ideas and approaches that can be applied to ocular/uveal melanoma research.
The grants provide $50,000 over one year for expenses related to the research project, which may include salary and benefits of the grant recipient, collaborator, postdoctoral or clinical research fellows, graduate students (including tuition costs associated with graduate students’ education and training), or research assistants; research/laboratory supplies; equipment; publication charges for manuscripts that pertain directly to the funded project; and other research expenses. Indirect costs are not allowable expenses.
Purpose
These grants will support translational or clinical research projects that examine important and druggable* novel targets and/or biomarkers that are relevant for ocular/uveal melanoma. If the research project is applicable to cutaneous melanoma as well, it must be focused primarily on ocular/uveal melanoma and its specific biology.
*For the purposes of this grant program, a “druggable” target is defined as a nucleic acid or a protein (e.g., an enzyme, a receptor) whose activity can be modified by a drug. The drug can be a small- molecular weight chemical compound or a biological, such as an antibody or a recombinant protein. The target should have been shown to be effective/mechanistically involved in cancer by relevant in vitro or in vivo models. A cancer-related biomarker might be a protein, a nucleic acid, or a metabolite that can be measured in biological fluids, tissue, or isolated cells for the diagnosis, monitoring, prognosis, or stratification of patients.
For more information, please see the foundation webpage.