Pilot Projects and Infrastructure. We are requesting $150,000/year to support 3-5 pilot projects for 1-2 years at an annual cost of $25,000 - $50,000 per investigator. This is an amount and time sufficient for an investigator to mount a truly new initiative and obtain sufficient preliminary data for an NCI grant application or a Clinical Trial. Smaller amounts of money, in our experience, permit only an incremental extension of on-going work. Although a budget breakdown would vary considerably from one project to another, depending on the nature of the research, these funds would typically cover personnel costs of a post-doc or technician at 50 -100% time, plus supplies and animals. Requests for new or improved infrastructure are generally handled through the Pilot Project process, and are weighed against the opportunities for new research initiatives. No faculty salaries are supported with Pilot Project monies. We will use institutional and philanthropic funds totaling $350,000 to bring the total funding base for internal pilot projects and infrastructure to $500,000. This is more than a 2 to 1 matching of the CCSG pilot funds with philanthropic funds. Our ability to raise these philanthropic funds is explicitly based on leveraging the investment made by the NCI in this activity, through the allocation of Developmental funding. Our experience has been that the NCI funding provides credibility for philanthropists, and that donors are more willing to provide research support when it is on top of an NCI investment.
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