Funding, News and Announcements

The Canadian Cancer Society and Lotte & John Hecht Memorial Foundation are excited to announce a recently launched new funding opportunity called “Disruptive Innovation Grants in Cancer Research”.

These grants will provide a unique opportunity for researchers in cancer, or any other field of discipline, to test out their novel ideas for potentially game-changing impact in cancer prevention, detection, or treatment. Disruptive Innovation grants will be bold, high risk/high reward, early-stage projects for which preliminary data is not required. Projects will be rated on their novelty, feasibility, and potential impact in the cancer field.

Examples of the kinds of projects we are seeking would include the adaptation of breakthroughs in other health conditions, such as cardiovascular, metabolic, and infectious diseases to the cancer field, or the harnessing of technologies from fields such as AI, robotics, engineering, chemistry, biology and ecology, or the opportunity to pursue serendipitous observations not supported by existing funding.

These grants are not intended to support research that represents incremental activities in a program of work or an expansion of previous work, but rather provide truly novel insights and directions for future larger grants that will serve as “game-changers” in the way we approach cancer, disrupting existing methods and displacing the status quo.

Up to $4M is available for this funding opportunity, enough to fund up to 16 projects to be awarded $250k over two years. Funding can be applied to generating pilot data for a new and exciting idea, establishing, and developing new collaborations where appropriate, testing a new technology/intervention, or using an existing technology/intervention in an innovative way.

For more details on the program and the application process, please visit here or type “Disruptive Innovation Grants” in the search box at cancer.ca.

Deadlines

Letter of Intent Phase: 

Internal: March 14, 2024, 4:30 pm. No identifying information should be in the text of the portion of the LOI to be shared with the reviewers. See the LOI guidelines, which are available here. For questions regarding internal procedure, contact the grants facilitator for your faculty. For additional resources, click here for guidance on internal deadlines and submission processes.

Funder: March 21, 2024 at 6pm AST

Full Application Phase: 

Internal: July 18, 2024 at 4:30 pm AST 

Funder: August 1, 2024 (time not announced yet)