Open Grant Calls – Bone Cancer Research Trust

​Since the Bone Cancer Research Trust was formed in 2006, we have awarded over £5.2 million to research focused on improving outcomes for primary bone cancer patients. To date, we have funded 101 research projects and continue to expand our research network, encouraging more researchers to focus their expertise on primary bone cancer.

Open Grant Calls

Clinical Trials Top-up Scheme

The Bone Cancer Research Trust are committed to improving outcomes for patients with primary bone cancer and believe the best way to do this is to fund high impact, collaborative research. We are keen to support all stages of research, from pilot projects, through to more substantive research and have developed this funding call to meet these needs.

Funding of up to £100,000 is available to provide additional support ongoing clinical trials. The trial may be observational or interventional and can be oncology or surgical. This additional funding may be used to support:

• aligned biological studies
• additional arms or research questions (observational or interventional)
• toxicology studies

A small proportion of the grant may also be used to support infrastructure costs.

The funding is available for UK applicants and the proposed research or study must take place in the UK; however, the parent clinical trial may be taking place in the UK or internationally.

Proposals should clearly describe the funded trial, including the value of the funding already secured, start date and duration of the funding award and details on data sharing, IP and T&Cs. The proposal should describe the background evidence, including figures and previous publications, that have been used to support the submitted project, how the described design will answer the questions posed in the proposal and how the additional support will give added value to the current trial. The input from patients on the design and development of the proposal should also be described.

Costings submitted will be fully scrutinised and so applicants should fully justify all costs included.

This is a rolling scheme, applications may be submitted at any point and will be considered at the next available meeting of BCRT’s Independent Scientific Advisory Panel.

To discuss the scope of the this scheme or the possibility of applying for funding over £100,000 and to obtain an application form, please contact us.

Osteosarcoma Restricted Funding

The Bone Cancer Research Trust are committed to improving outcomes for patients with primary bone cancer and believe the best way to do this is to fund high impact, collaborative research. We are keen to support all stages of research, from pilot projects, through to more substantive research and have developed this funding call to support osteosarcoma research.

We particularly welcome proposals that build on previously funded BCRT work, with a clear line of sight to patient benefit.

As part of this funding call, we welcome applications for funding to support:

• Pilot projects or requests to support small pieces of follow-on research needed to complete a project to a value of £25,000.
• Project grants up to a maximum value of £250,000.These may cover staff costs, including PhD students, however, this is not a PhD studentship funding call, and these should only form part of a wider project.

If applicants have any exceptional ideas for projects above these values listed, we encourage them to contact us for a discussion on whether this could be taken forwards.

We strongly encourage multi-institution, collaborative applications. Epidemiology and quality of life-based projects will not be considered.

Proposals should clearly describe background evidence to support the project, including figures, data and publications. Planned experiments should be descried in clear work packages, detailing how these experiments will answer the hypotheses posed. It is important that proposals demonstrate how the research may lead to patient benefit and should include patient and public involvement. The Bone Cancer Research Trust has a Patient and Public Involvement Panel, who may be contacted to support your application.

This funding is open to applicants based at UK research or NHS institutions.

Costings submitted will be fully scrutinised and so applicants should fully justify all costs included.

The deadline for this funding scheme is close of play on 25th March 2022.

The Hamilton Family Programme of Osteosarcoma Research

The Bone Cancer Research Trust are committed to improving outcomes for patients with primary bone cancer. There have been no new treatments approved for osteosarcoma in over 10 years and 5-year survival rates remain low, particularly in metastatic patients.

Over the last few years, a number of key initiatives have commenced that are focused on osteosarcoma, such as ICONIC and more widely in bone sarcoma research, such as the 100,000 Genomes Project and subsequently all patients having access to whole genome sequencing as standard of care.

Despite these initiatives, there has not been an international phase III clinical trial since EURAMOS-1, there are very few early phase trials targeting recruitment of patients with osteosarcoma and few new drugs in development.

The Bone Cancer Research Trust received a generous donation of £1 million to invest in osteosarcoma research. In order to invest this in the most impactful way, the Bone Cancer Research Trust held a planning meeting to discuss the key areas of priority and gaps in osteosarcoma research, which identified the following areas of priority:

• Pre-clinical models of osteosarcoma
• Surgical studies
• Mapping a future clinical trial
• Predictive biomarkers
• mTKIs
• Expansion of ICONIC
• Immunotherapies and microenvironment
• Radiomics
• New drugs
• Metastasis

The meeting allowed us to map out researchers interested in osteosarcoma research and their interests, which will be available to all interested parties to inform appropriate collaborations.

We are seeking proposals for funding for a programme of osteosarcoma research that are hypothesis driven and with the potential of bringing a step-change in treatment for osteosarcoma. Applications must be from a multi-disciplinary and collaborative team and show a clear line of sight to patient benefit.

Application Process

Stage 1. Expression of Interest

We are seeking expression of interest proposals from lead applicants, including details of the study team, the main area of focus for the research and summary of funding required up to a maximum of £1M. Expression of interests may be focused on one of the key areas of priority identified from the planning meeting or other key areas of osteosarcoma research.

These proposals will be reviewed and the most promising invited to submit a full application.

The deadline for submission of the EOI is 25th March 2022

Stage 2. Full Application

Shortlisted proposals will be awarded up to £1000 to support meetings and PPI to develop the full application.

Proposals should include a robust study design with attention to the planned statistical analyses. Clear plans for the collection, management and sharing of data should be described. Proposals should emphasise and pay particular attention to how the study will benefit patients with osteosarcoma and should describe clearly the vision for progression after this funding. We strongly encourage the submission of proposals that align with relevant ongoing initiatives, describing the benefit of this. Applicants should also describe clearly how they will disseminate the results of their work and how this will act as a catalyst to stimulate further research in osteosarcoma.

Proposals which include a clinical trial are welcomed however, must be within the budget outlined and involvement of a UKCRC registered Clinical Trials Unit is expected.

BCRT encourages applications from younger clinicians and researchers, in partnership with senior colleagues and strongly encourages proposals which demonstrate strong national /international collaboration.

The deadline for full applications is Monday 15th August 2022. The award is likely to be made in Q4 2022.

PhD Studentships

The Bone Cancer Research Trust are committed to improving outcomes for patients with primary bone cancer and place a high importance on supporting the development of young researchers. We are pleased to announce a call for PhD Studentships to commence in October 2023. Applications for funding of up to £140,000 are invited to support 4-year translational PhD studentships, which demonstrate a clear line of sight to patient benefit. Projects may focus on any or multiple forms of primary bone cancer, however, quality of life or epidemiology-based projects will not be considered. Part funding for projects already in progress will also not be considered.

Proposals should clearly describe background evidence to support the project, including figures, data and publications. Planned experiments should be descried in clear work packages, detailing how these experiments will answer the hypotheses posed. It is important that proposals demonstrate how the research may lead to patient benefit and should include patient and public involvement. The Bone Cancer Research Trust has a Patient and Public Involvement Panel, who may be contacted to support your application.

This funding is open to applicants based at UK research or NHS institutions.

Costings submitted will be fully scrutinised and so applicants should fully justify all costs included.

The closing date for applications will be 25th March 2022.