DoD VRP, Focused Translational Team Science Award | HT942524VRPFTTSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT942524VRPFTTSA

The FY24 DoD Vision Research Program (VRP) Focused Translational Team Science Award (FTTSA) is a discretionary grant opportunity from the Department of the Army (USAMRAA) designed to push the field forward on eye injury and visual dysfunction tied to military exposures. The intent is explicitly translational and team-based: the program is looking for a coordinated, multi-investigator effort that can meaningfully improve understanding and treatment of vision problems caused by events such as blast exposure, blunt trauma, thermal or chemical injury, and directed energy-related trauma.

A central requirement is that applicants frame their work around a single, clearly defined “overarching challenge” that represents a major barrier or gap in prevention, diagnosis, mitigation, or treatment of military-related ocular/visual injury. Applicants are encouraged to think in terms of what could realistically be achieved over a 10 to 15 year horizon if the right pieces were brought together, and then map that long-term goal to concrete short-term deliverables that can be accomplished within the award period. In other words, the program is not asking for loosely connected studies; it is asking for a unified strategy that targets a difficult, high-impact problem with a credible path toward translation.

The application must include a set of distinct research projects: at least three and no more than five. These projects must work together in a concerted, synergistic way to address the overarching challenge, and each project (and the overall program) must align with one or more of the FY24 VRP Focus Areas. The solicitation allows a wide range of project types and stages of research, from basic mechanistic work to translational, applied, clinical, or observational studies, as long as they are relevant to the stated military-exposure vision problem. Example topic areas include uncovering molecular/cellular/biophysical mechanisms of injury, tracking how pathophysiology evolves over time after exposure to guide targeted interventions, discovering biomarkers and therapeutic targets, developing and validating therapeutic agents or devices, building drug delivery approaches suitable for ocular trauma contexts, creating or improving clinically relevant trauma models, designing protective solutions to reduce the impact of military exposures on the eye and visual system, and developing lightweight portable tools for assessment or diagnosis.

A key design rule is that each individual project must stand on its own scientific merits. The award is not meant to fund a chain of dependent projects where later aims only work if earlier aims succeed. Instead, each project should offer a distinct approach to the shared challenge and be able to generate meaningful results independently, while still contributing to the team’s combined progress. Applicants also need preliminary data for each proposed project to demonstrate feasibility, which signals that the program expects teams to be ready to execute rather than still searching for basic proof-of-concept.

Clinical research is allowed, but the program draws a firm line between observational clinical research and a “clinical trial” as defined in federal human subjects regulations (45 CFR 46.102). A clinical trial, in this context, means prospectively assigning human subjects to an intervention to evaluate its effects on biomedical or behavioral health outcomes. Observational studies using human data or specimens, diagnostic/detection studies, epidemiology, behavioral research, outcomes research, and health services research can fall under clinical research without being considered clinical trials, as long as they do not prospectively test an intervention for safety/effectiveness/efficacy. The FTTSA allows at most one project to include a pilot clinical trial (PCT), but it does not support a full-scale clinical trial. The pilot is positioned as a feasibility and design-informing step for later trials, not a definitive safety or efficacy study, and proposals that include a PCT face extra submission requirements and review criteria, including demonstrating a solid grasp of regulatory approvals and the regulatory process.

Because the award emphasizes team science, the application must include a detailed implementation and coordination plan explaining how the participating groups will actually function as a single integrated team. Reviewers will be looking for practical mechanisms for frequent communication, data and resource sharing, regular interaction, and intentional steps to create synergy so the combined effort can move faster or farther than the same investigators working separately. The award also requires that the CDMRP Science Officer assigned to the award be invited to periodic team meetings, and the meeting plan should be described in the application.

The team structure is formalized (and noted as new in FY24) with an Overall Lead Principal Investigator plus multiple Project PIs. The Overall Lead PI is responsible for leading the overall program and also running one of the projects, and they must show a track record of successfully leading large, collaborative research efforts. Each additional project is led by a Project PI, and each PI may lead only one project. Administratively, the Overall Lead PI handles most of the application submission workload, but Project PIs also have their own submission requirements. If selected for funding, the structure results in separate awards for each PI to their recipient organization(s), with separate reporting, regulatory, and administrative obligations attached to each award.

From the posted opportunity details, the funding opportunity number is HT942524VRPFTTSA, the assistance listing (CFDA) is 12.420, eligibility is listed as unrestricted, the original closing date is 2024-11-08, and the expected number of awards is 1. Overall, the program is aiming to fund a single, high-impact, tightly coordinated team that can define a major translational challenge in military-related eye/vision trauma and deliver multiple independent but strategically aligned projects that collectively accelerate progress toward better diagnostics, protective strategies, and treatments.

• The Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD VRP, Focused Translational Team Science Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-05-16.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-11-08. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted.

Apply for HT942524VRPFTTSA

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: