The Defense Health Agency’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs has opened HT942526OCRPOCCTAECI, FY26 Ovarian Cancer Clinical Trial Academy – Early-Career Investigator Award. The award supports early-career investigators developing careers in ovarian cancer clinical-trial research through intensive mentoring, networking, translational research, and small-scale early-phase clinical trials.
Required pre-application deadline: September 15, 2026 at 5:00 PM Eastern Time. Full application deadline: October 1, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. Application submission is a required two-step process. The pre-application is submitted through eBRAP, and extramural full applications are submitted through Grants.gov.
Funding: CDMRP expects to allot approximately $4.2 million for about three awards, with a total-cost cap of $1.4 million per award and a maximum four-year period of performance. Cost sharing is not an eligibility requirement.
Eligibility: Eligible organizations include domestic and foreign, for-profit and nonprofit, public and private organizations. The PI must satisfy the Early-Career Investigator requirements, including completion of the last postdoctoral research position, clinical fellowship, or equivalent within 12 years of the full-application deadline, and must commit at least 25% effort to the award and/or Academy activities for the first two years. A Statement of Eligibility is required. The Designated Mentor must be an independent established clinical trialist with a strong clinical-trial mentoring record and an active clinical trial at application; ovarian cancer research experience is required of the Designated Mentor when the ECI lacks it.
Research readiness: Preliminary data are required. The proposed work must support translational research and a small-scale, early-phase ovarian cancer clinical trial. A credible application requires an eligible ECI, qualified mentor structure, appropriate patient population and trial infrastructure, intervention access, regulatory readiness, statistical and data-management capability, and the other program-specific application components.
Atlas fit: The organization categories are broad, but the individual investigator, mentor, clinical-trial, and same-day pre-application requirements are controlling. This is not classified as a submission-ready Dr. Miltie direct pursuit on current evidence. Preferred posture: Partner-Led / Qualified Ovarian Cancer ECI and Clinical-Trial Mentor. Because the mandatory pre-application is due today, do not initiate new applicant outreach inside the cutoff; only already-ready eligible teams with a timely pre-application can continue to the full application.