Physical Science-Oncology Centers (U54)

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Purpose. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), issued by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), solicits grant applications to build a collaborative Network of Physical Science-Oncology Centers (PS-OCs). The goal for PS-OCs initiative is to collectively advance our understanding of the physical laws and principles that shape and govern the emergence of cancer and its behavior at all scales.The PS-OCs will bring together expert teams from the fields of physics, cancer biology, physical chemistry, mathematics, and engineering to assemble and develop the infrastructure, capabilities, research programs, and the Network required to enable team research converging the physical sciences with cancer biology.PS-OCs, individually and together, will support and nurture a new trans-disciplinary environment and research that: (1) originates and tests novel, non-traditional physical-sciences based approaches to understanding and controlling cancer; (2) generates orthogonal sets of physical measurements and integrates them with existing knowledge of cancer; and (3) develops and evaluates theoretical physics approaches to provide a comprehensive and dynamic picture of cancer.Ultimately, through coordinated, iterative, trans-Network development and testing of innovative, perhaps non-traditional, approaches to cancer processes, PS-OCs are expected to catalyze and generate new bodies of knowledge and fields of cancer study that identify and define the critical aspects of the physics, chemistry, and engineering that operate at all levels in cancer processes.

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