Competitive Awards

In 1993, PCF (CaPCURE) introduced the Competitive Awards program, which revolutionized the way research is evaluated and funded, empowering many young scientists with good ideas to fill the pipeline of innovation with new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. This has proven successful: There is virtually no new scientific idea or product on development or on the market for prostate cancer that has not been supported at least in part by PCF funding. As a direct result of the PCF’s support and advocacy, the scientific and medical community has turned the corner on prostate cancer. We believe an end to death and suffering from this disease is in sight.

To ensure that the PCF ultimately attains its goal of eliminating death from prostate cancer, a comprehensive review of our competitive awards programs from 1993 to 2006 was initiated. While the initial review concluded that the awards program performed exceedingly well and fulfilled our initially-stated 1993 goals, we decided to develop a new strategy to build upon that initial success. By the end of 2007, we introduced a new strategy designed to focus on specific assets that now exist in the field of prostate cancer research. It would build a sustainable and dynamic research enterprise comprised of cross-disciplinary teams working on multi-year programs that will drive to the end-game—new, effective therapies for eradicating this disease.

The resulting programs are designed to replace our former Competitive Awards Program. Each of these programs is unique with individual goals and objectives that are designed to integrate with each other and, most importantly, to be scalable and self-perpetuating.