This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) issued by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is an open competition initiative, designed to continue the efforts of the NCI to develop and translate cancer-relevant optical imaging technologies as a part of an overall imaging program for early cancer detection, diagnosis, therapeutic response, drug development, and image-guided therapy. This FOA stems from the previous initiative on optical imaging technology. However, the program structure and goals of the current FOA differ from those of the original program. Accordingly, all responses to this FOA will be considered new applications, with the main objective being to accelerate the translational research of in vivo multimodal imaging and/or spectroscopic platforms from the laboratory and pre-clinical level to the clinical level. Applications are sought from multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research teams. After the awards, successful teams will become Centers that will be organized into an interactive network. The network will be called the "Network for Translational Research: Optical Imaging" (NTR). The purpose of NTR is to develop, optimize, and validate imaging technology platforms and methods so that they can enter single or multi-site clinical trials and eventually be incorporated into clinical practice. Applicants responding to this FOA must identify a specific cancer-relevant clinical goal and propose to develop and validate at least one multimodal imaging platform, as defined in this FOA, to address this clinical goal.

• Release Date: October 12, 2007
• Application Receipt Date(s): Standard dates
• Letters of Intent Receipt Date: December 24, 2007
• Application Receipt Date: January 24, 2008
• Set-aside funds: $4.8M per year, $24M over 5 years; approximately 4 awards
• Contact: Houston Baker, Ph.D., Phone: 310-594-9117; E-mail: bakerhou@mail.nih.gov
  Laurence Clarke, Ph.D., Phone: 301-435-9190; E-mail: lclarke@mail.nih.gov
  Robert Nordstrom, Ph.D., Phone: 301-594-9192; E-mail: nordstrr@mail.nih.gov
  Keyvan Farahani, Ph.D., Phone: 301-451-2651; E-mail: Farahani@mail.nih.gov
  Guoying Liu, Ph.D., Phone: 301-594-5220; E-mail: liug@mail.nih.gov
  Guilllermo Marquez, Ph.D., Phone 310-451-3896; E-mail: marquezg@mail.nih.gov

See full description in NIH Guide: RFA-CA-08-002