Merkin City of Hope and Caltech Biomedical Research Initiative

We are delighted to announce the 2025 Request for Applications (RFA) for the City of Hope (CoH) and Caltech (CiT) Biomedical Research Initiative. Supported by a generous endowment, this initiative aims to fund projects of <$150K for each institution. It fosters collaborative research by funding pilot projects that aim to advance innovative ideas in basic and translational research that have the potential to transform biomedicine. These awards provide crucial early-stage support for translational projects, emphasizing partnerships between City of Hope and Caltech. As a requirement for collaboration, each project must include investigator(s) from Caltech, with an identified Caltech Lead PI.

• Submission Deadline: 11:59 PM (PDT) Monday December 1, 2025.

If awarded, funding (up to $150K) will directly support the CoH principal investigator to perform feasibility, pre-clinical, or clinical studies to validate the potential healthcare innovation and to position them, if successful, for additional internal or external grant funding or for commercialization. Matching funds (up to $150K) will be awarded to the CiT PI/team for the Caltech portion of research.

Eligibility:

• At City of Hope, CoH Professors, Research Professors, and clinicians may serve as lead PIs.
• At Caltech, the lead PI position is open to faculty-level or equivalent appointments; Caltech researchers other than tenure-track and tenured faculty will need to obtain approval from their Division Chair and Vice Provost for Research prior to submitting an application.
• Multi-faculty projects are welcome, but each application must include one lead PI from City of Hope and one from Caltech for grant purposes.
• Research requiring IRB, IACUC, IBC approvals, or MTAs can commence only after the approvals (or exemptions, as applicable) are obtained.

Please direct inquiries to Dr. John Carpten (Director, Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope) [email protected], and/or Dr. Jennifer Treweek (Scientific Director, Merkin Institute for Translational Research, Caltech) [email protected].

Grant application format: (NOTE: Applications must follow the format below. All items are required.)

1. Biomedical problem and projected impact. Define the unmet medical need your project addresses and discuss its importance, including the prevalence, and current solutions. Describe the advantages of your solution relative to the current standard of care and/or to any competing approach under development. If applicable, outline the potential for generalizing to other diseases, clinical settings, etc.
2. Approach. Provide specific aims, pertinent preliminary data, and an outline of how you plan to use the award to establish proof of concept. Include milestones linked to a projected timeline.
3. Team. Describe the team, identifying the research and clinical components, and how they will interact. State any plan for matching funds from your research partner(s) or other source(s).
4. Beyond the pilot grant: Outline your plan to move the project forward after the pilot award.
   ***Parts 1-4 combined (up to three pages maximum, including figures, but not including references).
5. One budget page with brief justifications (applicants may request a maximum of $150K in direct costs/institution).
   a. List salaries, supplies, charges for shared resource cores or CROs, etc. All costs are direct.
   b. Either confirm that no other funding for this project has been applied for, or list other funding related to this application and the timing of these current and pending funds.
6. Division Approval Form. A signed DAF for the Caltech sponsored project component.

Criteria for selection include:

• Overall scientific merit of the project.
• Anticipated translational impact.
• The caliber of both CoH and CiT teams, and the strength of their link/collaboration.
• Adequacy of additional funds if needed (e.g. from partner institution(s) or other sources).
• The current path and vision to achieve translation into the clinic or another appropriate venue.

Application submission:

Please email the application as a pdf attachment to [email protected] and [email protected] with the subject line "CoH-Caltech Biomedical Initiative Proposal". Name your attached application file as follows: CoH-CiT-2025_CoH Last Name_CiT Last Name. For example, for CoH PI John Smith and CiT PI Jane Doe, the file would be titled: "CoH-CiT-2025_Smith_Doe.pdf"

The application deadline is Monday December 1, 2025, with an anticipated start date of March 1, 2026.