The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is accepting applications for RFA-CA-27-020, Advanced Development of Informatics Technologies for Cancer Research and Management (U24 Clinical Trial Optional), part of the Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) Program.
Deadline: October 19, 2026 at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization. No late applications are accepted. The NOFO expires October 20, 2026.
Funding: NCI intends to commit approximately $2.6 million in FY2027 for an estimated three awards. Application budgets are limited to $600,000 in direct costs per year, excluding consortium F&A, for a project period of up to five years. Cost sharing is not required.
Eligibility: eligible organizations include public and private institutions of higher education, nonprofits, small businesses and other for-profit organizations, state and local governments, tribal entities, independent school districts, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, and other listed entities. UAMS is an eligible Arkansas public institution of higher education.
Program scope: this U24 supports advanced development and enhancement of emerging informatics technologies for cancer research and management. The technology must already have passed initial prototyping and pilot development, demonstrate potential for broader impact, have a compelling need for further enhancement, and not yet be widely adopted. Projects must include end-user feedback, community engagement, dissemination or training, and realistic development milestones.
Responsive areas include machine learning and deep learning, data-acquisition software, data mining and visualization, data integration and workflow tools, standards and data exchange, technologies for evaluating software, algorithms or data-collection methods, clinical decision support and treatment planning, next-generation clinical-trial technologies, behavioral intervention tools, research collaboration and algorithm-evaluation platforms, heterogeneous clinical/multi-omics/imaging/wearable data integration, and multimodal approaches that improve trial accessibility, recruitment, operations, or interpretation.
Important restrictions: projects are not responsive if data generation exceeds 10% of the budget in a single year, if the primary activity is applying existing data-analysis methods, if the work is exploratory or early-stage technology development, or if the application does not document the current state and utilization of the software being enhanced.
Arkansas / Atlas fit: UAMS has a strong cancer imaging and biomedical-informatics pathway. N9+ has a conditional role only where structured remotely acquired examination, physiologic, wearable, connected-device, or other multimodal data materially support an applicant-led informatics technology-development aim. It should not be positioned as a stand-alone equipment purchase. Dr. Miltie is organizationally within an eligible for-profit category, but Atlas has not verified that Dr. Miltie independently controls the mature cancer-informatics technology required for a direct application; a technology/data-source collaboration is the more realistic pathway unless that scientific gate is independently satisfied.
Applications may be submitted through NIH ASSIST, an institutional system-to-system solution, or Grants.gov Workspace, with eRA Commons used for tracking.