Developmental Funds

Developmental Funds Summary During the current grant cycle, the Masonic Cancer Center (MCC) used developmental funds to provide salary support for 5 newly recruited research faculty, fund pilot projects, and support 2 developing Shared Resources. The MCC internal grants program awarded 88 pilot projects and had an overall ROI of 822%. Of these, 13 pilot projects were supported with $675,000 from the CCSG, 2 of which leveraged $150K in pilot funds into $4.5M in R01 funding, and 6 of which are still in their pilot funding period. The funds for the developing Proteogenomics Shared Resource have led to its inclusion as a new Shared Resource in the current application. The Exposures and Effects Shared Resource is still in its early stages of development and is included now as a developing Shared Resource. Per the new grant application guidelines, details about developing shared resources can be found in the Shared Resource Management section. In the upcoming funding period, MCC is proposing to use developmental funds to provide start-up support for newly recruited faculty in certain research areas key to the updated Strategic Plan: Health Equity in the forms of recruiting more diverse faculty and of viewing cancer through the lens of the patient experience (etiology, screening, prevention, environmental exposures, treatment, discovery of basic mechanisms), Aging and Cancer (senescence, survivorship, prevention), and the translational potential of Biomarkers in cancer treatment and prevention. In addition, the CCSG funds will be used to provide supplemental funding for the MCC Catchment Community Pilot Grants mechanism and cancer-focused pilots awarded through MCC’s partnership with the University of Minnesota Program in Health Disparities Research. These pilots are designed to encourage community-initiated research and to foster sustainable long-term collaboration between community-based organizations and academic researchers on research projects focused on reducing and eliminating health disparities.