DoD Vision Focused Translational Team Science Award | HT9425 23 VRP FTTSA

Opportunity Information: Apply for HT9425 23 VRP FTTSA

The DoD Vision Focused Translational Team Science Award (FTTSA) is a FY23 funding opportunity from the Department of Defense (administered through the U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, USAMRAA) designed to push the field forward on eye injuries and visual dysfunction linked to military exposures. The program is aimed at problems caused by events such as blast, blunt impact, thermal or chemical injury, and directed energy trauma. The central emphasis is translation: applicants are expected to build a coordinated team effort that not only improves scientific understanding of these injuries but also moves the work toward practical prevention tools, diagnostics, and treatments that could realistically change care.

A defining feature of this award is the requirement for true team science organized around one clear, overarching challenge question. Applicants are encouraged to pick a challenge by starting with real barriers and gaps in the current landscape (for example, why diagnosis is still delayed, why certain injuries progress over time, why treatments do not reach the right tissues, or why protection and field assessment remain limited). The program asks teams to think with a long horizon, imagining what could be achievable in 10 to 15 years if the right breakthroughs occur, then working backward to define near-term goals that are feasible within the award and that set up longer-term impact. In other words, the application should not read like loosely connected projects under one umbrella; it should show a deliberate, integrated plan where distinct experts contribute different angles toward the same big outcome.

Applications must include a set of three to five research projects that operate as a concerted, synergistic package. Each project must align with one or more FY23 Vision Research Program focus areas, and the portfolio should collectively tackle the overarching challenge from multiple directions. The opportunity explicitly allows a wide range of scientific topics, including studies that uncover molecular, cellular, or biophysical mechanisms of injury; work that tracks how pathophysiology changes over time after exposure to identify windows for intervention; discovery of biomarkers or therapeutic targets; development and validation of drugs, biologics, devices, or drug delivery approaches suited to ocular trauma; creation or refinement of clinically relevant trauma models; development of protective strategies that reduce exposure-related damage; and lightweight, portable tools that can assess or diagnose vision-related injury in operational or resource-limited settings.

Even though the projects are meant to be synergistic, an important ground rule is that each project has to stand on its own scientific merits. The program is not meant to fund a chain of dependencies where Project B only works if Project A succeeds. Instead, each component should use a distinct approach to address the shared challenge and still be capable of producing meaningful results and publishable advances, with a plausible path to influence either the visual system trauma research field or patient care. To reinforce feasibility, the solicitation requires preliminary data for each proposed project, signaling that reviewers will be looking for evidence that the work can be executed as proposed rather than being purely speculative.

The award is flexible about the phase of research, allowing basic, translational, applied, clinical, or observational work across the project set. However, it draws a firm line on clinical trials: one project may include a pilot clinical trial (PCT), but the mechanism does not support a full-scale clinical trial. The pilot clinical trial is framed as an early, limited test intended to inform feasibility, rationale, and the design of later definitive trials, rather than to establish safety or efficacy in the way a large trial would. If a team proposes a PCT, the application faces additional submission requirements and review criteria, and it must demonstrate that the investigators understand the regulatory pathway and approval process relevant to the intervention being tested.

The solicitation also clarifies what counts as a clinical trial: any study in which human subjects are prospectively assigned to an intervention (including placebo or control) to evaluate effects on biomedical or behavioral health outcomes. Studies that do not measure safety, effectiveness, and/or efficacy outcomes of an intervention are not treated as clinical trials under this definition. For funded pilot clinical trials, the award comes with specific compliance obligations, including posting the informed consent form on a publicly available federal website in line with 32 CFR 219 requirements and registering the study on ClinicalTrials.gov before the study begins.

Applicants are also encouraged to leverage programs and resources from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), particularly tools that improve preclinical innovation and speed the translational pipeline. This is a signal that the DoD wants teams to take advantage of established translational infrastructure where it can reduce bottlenecks, improve rigor and reproducibility, and accelerate progress toward real-world solutions.

Administratively, the opportunity is listed as HT9425-23-VRP-FTTSA under CFDA 12.420, categorized under science and technology and other R and D. The funding instruments include cooperative agreements and grants, eligibility is broadly unrestricted (open to any entity type, subject to any specific clarifications in the full announcement), and the program expected to make a single award under this cycle. The original closing date for the FY23 posting was November 8, 2023.

• The Department of Defense, Dept. of the Army -- USAMRAA in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "DoD Vision Focused Translational Team Science Award" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 12.420.
• This funding opportunity was created on May 11, 2023.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Nov 08, 2023. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Unrestricted (i.e., open to any type of entity above), subject to any clarification in text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility.

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