University Times

Applications will be accepted through Oct. 1 by the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute for the American Cancer Society's (ACS) George Heckman Memorial Institutional Grants for small cancer research projects.

The grants serve as seed money for promising new projects or novel ideas by junior investigators in cancer research. Awards will be made by Nov. 5.

In awarding grants, the review committee considers both scientific merit and the perceived needs of investigators for funding to allow the generation of data for external grant support.

Only junior faculty (assistant professors, instructors or their equivalent), who do not currently have a national grant to support their work and have not received prior support from the ACS institutional grants program are eligible.

Funding for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or residents will not be allowed unless their role is to facilitate the research of junior investigators who receive the award.

For junior investigators working in the lab of a senior investigator, the requested support must be for a different topic than that for which the senior investigator already has support. Both basic and clinical research are appropriate for the grant.

Approximately half of the funds will be allocated to projects focused on three areas: A) Studies designed to translate basic or laboratory findings to clinical applications for the prevention, diagnosis and/or treatment or breast, lung, ovarian, prostate or colorectal cancer.

B) Studies related to psychosocial or bio-behavioral research. This could include work on psychosocial influences in disease progression, quality of life of cancer patients, patient compliance, dietary control and smoking cessation.

C) Studies related to gene therapy of cancer.

Budget requests for these projects should be limited to $15,000 direct costs only. Appropriate types of expenditures are salaries for research assistants, stipends for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows engaged in cancer research, expendable supplies, animals and their care, and domestic travel to other labs to learn new techniques. The need to travel must be very well documented.

A stipend of $2,500 is available for one graduate student in the professional health sciences to spend time in a research lab while enrolled in a degree program. The goal is to encourage students in the clinical professional schools to enter a research career.

Applications for the graduate student stipend may either be as a supplement to a research grant application or as a separate application focused on the research program and plans for the student.

Applications concerning any type of cancer research are eligible for funding to a maximum of $5,500 direct costs only.

Applications also are encouraged for research pertaining to cancer in the economically disadvantaged. Approximately half of the total funds will be devoted to these smaller grants.

Applications are available from Iris E. Lowe (692-2759), UPCI, 3471 Fifth Ave., Suite 201, Kaufmann Building.