NCI Small Grants Program for Cancer Research (Omnibus) R03

NCI Small Grants Program — R03

Supports cancer pilot research with broad domestic and international eligibility.

⚠ This may reflect a past cycle — verify the current call on the funder's site.

The NCI Small Grants Program for Cancer Research (R03) is the National Cancer Institute's standing mechanism for funding small, self-contained cancer research projects that can be completed in a short period of time with limited resources. The program was most recently issued as PAR-25-078, posted October 18, 2024, and archived February 12, 2026. It is expected to be reissued under a PAR-26 successor, consistent with prior cycles PAR-23-066 and PAR-21-341.

Awards are capped at $50,000 in direct costs per year for a maximum two-year project period, giving a maximum total of $100,000. No cost-sharing is required. The R03 mechanism supports five defined project types: pilot and feasibility studies, secondary analysis of existing data, small self-contained research projects, development of research methodology, and development of new research technology. Eligibility is unusually broad for an NCI program: it includes higher education institutions, nonprofits with and without 501(c)(3) status, small businesses, for-profit organizations, state and local governments, tribal entities, and foreign organizations. Individual investigators are not eligible as direct applicants.

Because PAR-25-078 is archived and a successor has not yet been confirmed at catalog fetch, applicants should monitor the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts for a reissued PAR-26 NCI R03 Omnibus before submitting. NCI's R03 sits within an Omnibus family alongside the R21 Exploratory/Developmental (PAR-25-077) and R01 (PAR-25-079) mechanisms, allowing teams to select the appropriate scale. The R03 is well-suited to early feasibility work, methods development, or analysis of existing datasets rather than full hypothesis-driven research programs.