To maintain momentum during the University of Illinois Cancer Center’s march toward National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation, funding is available to support treatment clinical trials. Investigator-initiated trial applications submitted after October 3 will not be considered for funding.
Priority will be given to trials with the following features:
- Any treatment area of cancer including, but not limited to, treatment trials of advanced or early-stage disease, or in supportive care. Trials may evaluate any anti-cancer intervention including repurposing of drugs or combinations of drugs already in clinical use but study novel applications, novel procedures (e.g., robotic surgery, new radiation therapy approaches), or in understudied populations.
- Trials must be considered therapeutic and must register in clinicaltrials.gov. A key feature of successful applications is that accruals will count towards our treatment enrollment targets.
- Full accrual should be feasible within 12-24 months from start of trial. Ideally, outcomes should be publishable soon after final accrual.
- Procedures and drugs are billable to insurance and considered standard of care. For drug studies, investigational agents that are not commercially available for the indication studied must be supplied by the manufacturer. Budget will not be sufficient to cover high-cost drugs.
- Funds will generally be used to cover start-up and study personnel time but may also be used for specimen collection (including research biopsy) and processing.
- Considers translational outcome involving biospecimens.
Note: Some exceptions to the above criteria may be accepted.
Apply for Investigator-Initiated Trial Funds
Please submit to Darlene Kitterman, MBA, Administrative Director of the Clinical Trials Office ([email protected]), a 1-page PDF describing the project and include rationale, hypothesis, simple trial details (patient population, number needed to recruit), anticipated outcomes and brief biostatistical plan. Brevity and clarity are appreciated. A second optional page can be included with figures or any references needed to better understand the proposal. Provide a rough budget (detailed budgets will be requested from successful applications). Please target a range of $25-50k but other amounts will be considered. All applications will be reviewed and in person verbal feedback will be provided. An opportunity for applicants to clarify aspects of their applications will be provided. There will be two or three trials funded depending on scope and budget of projects deemed most worthy. Selected projects will be funded immediately upon approval of the PRC and IRB until funds are exhausted.