PCF Challenge Awards

PCF Challenge Award

Funds team-led prostate cancer research on recurrent and advanced disease through a Prostate Cancer Foundation challenge model.

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

The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Challenge Award funds large-scale, team-based science aimed at making transformational advances against recurrent and advanced prostate cancer. PCF launched the Challenge Award to catalyze multi-disciplinary collaborations that would not otherwise form within the traditional single-investigator grant system, and since 1993 the foundation has made more than 2,250 awards across all its programs. The 2026 Challenge Award cycle accepted applications through March 16, 2026 at 3:00 p.m. EDT, with annual cycles expected to recur each spring.

Awards range from $300,000 to $1,500,000 per year in direct costs over three years, putting total award value between $900,000 and $4,500,000 per project. Teams must include at least three experienced investigators with distinct scientific disciplines; teams can span one or multiple institutions, and PCF explicitly encourages partnerships with researchers who have not previously worked in prostate cancer. The focus is specifically on recurrent or advanced disease — basic science projects targeting early-stage disease are not in scope. Individual investigators cannot apply; the team-science structure is a hard requirement.

To win a Challenge Award, a team must propose genuinely transformational science rather than incremental work, and the cross-disciplinary structure of the team is evaluated as a scientific asset, not merely an administrative requirement. Eligible host institutions are universities and research organizations; for-profit entities may not serve as the receiving institution. PCF accepts applications through its online grants portal, and prospective teams should begin organizing multi-institutional collaboration agreements and mentor letters well before the annual deadline.