Funding Opportunity Number: PAR-28-062
Issuing agency: National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Open date: December 25, 2026.
Application deadline: January 25, 2027 at 5:00 PM local time of the applicant organization.
Funding: Application budgets are limited to $1.3 million in direct costs per year for partnerships of two institutions and $1.8 million in direct costs per year for partnerships of three institutions. The maximum project period is 5 years. Cost sharing is not required.
Purpose: CAPRI establishes and strengthens comprehensive partnerships between Resource Limited Institutions (RLIs) and NCI-designated Cancer Centers to build sustainable cancer research capacity, advance collaborative research, develop early-stage investigators and trainees, and integrate outreach and education with partnership research priorities.
Eligibility: Each partnership must include both an RLI and an NCI-designated Cancer Center. Partnerships of more than two institutions require NCI approval before applying. To qualify as an RLI, the institution must meet the NOFO’s NIH-funding threshold and award degrees in biomedical, health-professions, or health-related sciences. The NOFO permits specified U.S. higher-education, nonprofit, for-profit, federal, school-district, faith/community, and regional organization types subject to these partnership requirements. Non-U.S. organizations/components and foreign components are not eligible.
Submission controls: This is a linked, multi-project application. The opportunity-specific forms package must be accessed through ASSIST or an institutional system-to-system solution. Applicants must follow the Multi-Project instructions and the NOFO-specific component/page limits, including Overall, Administrative Core, Full Research Project, Pilot Research Project, Planning and Evaluation, Outreach and Engagement, and optional Shared Resource Core components. Only one U54 partnership per institution will be supported.
Atlas assessment: High-value cancer-research capacity opportunity, but it is not yet open and has strict linked-partnership requirements. Preserve as Upcoming and do not publish or initiate outreach before the December 25, 2026 open date. Appropriate future posture is Partner-Led / Qualifying RLI + NCI-Designated Cancer Center Partnership.
Atlas score: 96/100.