The Office of Research Prizes and Awards is calling for internal applicants to the V Foundation's Breaking Barriers grant competition. UBC and BC Cancer are jointly invited to nominate a single candidate for this award, to be nominated ahead of the sponsor's February 9 NOI deadline. To accommodate this, our internal deadline for nominations is January 16.
Unique to this grant from V Foundation is the requirement for candidates to describe how their "personal journeys, shaped by their unique experiences and perspectives, bring valuable and often overlooked insights to cancer research." UBC is seeking candidates who can speak to their experiences overcoming barriers including but not limited to structural and historical barriers.
This grant is 4 years, 800k (USD; 10% indirect) and intended for research on any adult cancer type.
There are two streams for this grant, an early career stream that can be lab-based or translational (V Scholar), and a translational stream with no career stage and fewer eligibility limitations. Applicants must identify their intended stream. Research areas not included in this scope are epidemiology, behavioral science, and health services research.
Translational Stream:
Applicants may propose cancer research that moves a novel strategy from the laboratory into a human clinical trial or uses specimens from a clinical trial to test hypotheses, develop biomarkers, or mechanisms. The research must apply in a direct way to human beings within 3 years from the end of the grant. If biomarker research is undertaken, a validation set or independent clinical trial is essential. A plan for biomarker validation, if applicable, must be included in any proposal. The endpoint of the project should be the planning or initiation of a new clinical trial or conducting an investigator-initiated trial with laboratory correlates that test hypotheses.
V Scholar (early career) Stream:
V Scholar grants are intended to accelerate a promising career and position the candidate to be competitive for R01 and CIHR Project grants toward the end of the grant. Candidates must be within their first five years of their first full-time, independent appointment. As well, they must not have held an R01 type major project grant, any research grant worth over $750k, or cumulative research funding of more than $1m (all USD).
Internal Nomination Components:
Submit to Kevin McCartney (kevin.mccartney@ubc.ca) by January 16:
- Identify intended program: V Scholar or Translational
- UBC CV
- Draft recommendation letter (3 pages max), with confirmation that this has been vetted by your Department Head, addressing:
- Why you should be selected
- Institutional resources that will be available to you
- Overview of the mentoring plan that will be available to you (V Scholar only)
- If the nature of the research is bench to bedside with patient contact, describe how patient advocacy/communication will be or has been incorporated into your training
- If the nature of the research is basic and/or translational science, describe how science communication with diverse audiences will be or has been incorporated into your training
- Summary of research proposal (1 page max)
- Narrative describing how the candidate's unique experiences have influenced their career path and research focus (~150 words)
- For V Scholar Only: A Financial worksheet to ensure eligibility (available on the V website and from ORPA)
As well, BC Cancer applicants must follow typical BC Cancer procedures for registering their LOI.
Please contact Kevin McCartney (kevin.mccartney@ubc.ca) with any questions.