Institutional Research Grants
Forecasted
Institutional Research Grants support early-career cancer investigators with seed funding for pilot projects that generate preliminary results and help them compete for larger national research awards.
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Funder: American Cancer Society
Due Dates (Anticipated): June 2027 (Application deadline)
Funding Amounts: New awards: up to $480,000 over 4 years; renewals: up to $400,000 over 4 years; pilot grants: $20,000–$60,000
Summary: Institutional block grants provide seed funding for early-career cancer investigators to generate preliminary results for national grant competitions.
Key Information: Institutions apply for the block award; junior investigators receive pilot funding through the institution’s IRG review committee.
Description
The American Cancer Society’s Institutional Research Grants (IRG) program supports newly independent cancer researchers through block awards to institutions. Institutions allocate pilot grants to early-career faculty who are eligible for national competitive research funding but do not yet hold NIH R01 or equivalent grants. The goal is to help these investigators initiate cancer research projects, obtain preliminary results, and compete successfully for larger national awards.
Administered by the Career Growth and Research Excellence program within Extramural Discovery Science, IRG accepts work across the cancer research continuum. It also promotes career-development mentoring, collaboration across research disciplines and institutions, and engagement with ACS locally and nationally. Regional consortia are encouraged, including partnerships that give smaller biomedical research institutions access to pilot funding.
