NCI Funding Policies for Research Project Grants

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Budget Data

In FY 2002, NCI received $4,188,351,000, an increase of $467,442,000 or 12.6 percent over FY 2001. Of that total, $1,927,943,000 has been allocated to Research Project Grant awards -- an increase of $245,622,000 or 14.6 percent over FY 2001 (which is broken out in Chart 2).
The following chart displays the distribution of the overall FY 2002 budget across the different mechanisms of support at NCI.

CHART 1

The $245,622,000 increase allocated to Research Project Grants (RPG) has been distributed as displayed in the following chart. The largest portion of the increase goes to pay the increasing cost of non-competing (type-5) awards.

CHART 2

Paylines

Traditional research grants (R01): 22.0 percentile (modified 5/28/2002)
Program Project Grants do not have a payline. NCI projects a success rate of 30 to 35 percent for P01 grants

FY 2002 Financial Management Plan Elements for Awarding Grants

Limit programmatic reductions to 5 percent for competing R01 awards within the payline when the direct cost awarded is 7 modules ($175,000) or lower. Larger competing R01 grants will receive programmatic reductions of approximately 11 percent. Modular grants will be funded with no escalation factor for future years.
In general, future year commitments for non-modular grants will be calculated by using the FY 2002 award level as a base and applying a 3 percent escalation factor for recurring costs. Appropriate adjustments will be made for non-recurring costs, such as equipment.
New (type-1) P01 grants will sustain reductions of approximately 15 percent from levels recommended by peer review.
Competing renewal (type 2) awards, whose requested level has been capped at 20 percent over the previous year funding, will be reduced 6 percent from peer review recommendations. This includes Program Project Grants (P01s) for the full year and traditional research grants (R01s) from the third review round (submitted on the receipt date October/November 2001). (Policy modified 4/16/2002)

Selected Allocations of Interest

$8 million exception allocation for Accelerated Executive Review (AER) exception requests. (modified 5/28/2002)
$7 million exception allocation for first time R01 investigators which will effectively extend the payline for eligible applicants near the 24^th percentile. (modified 5/28/2002)
$20 million exception allocation for high priority P01s and R01s outside the paylines.

High Priority Topics

NCI will select R01s which are 100 percent devoted to pancreatic research for funding up to 50 percent beyond the standard R01 payline (up to the 33 percentile). Pancreatic applications in other mechanisms (such as R03s or R21s) will also be given special consideration. (modified 5/28/2002)