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Below is a summary assembled by the Research & Innovation Office (RIO). Please see the full solicitation for complete information about the funding opportunity.

Program Summary

The Mark Foundation Endeavor Awards support collaborative research projects that bring together investigators with diverse areas of expertise to tackle challenges in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. These grants are awarded to teams of three or more investigators to generate and integrate data from diverse lines of research and transform those insights into advances for cancer patients that could not be achieved by individual efforts. A description of the teams granted Endeavor Awards in 2025 can be found .

Endeavor Awards support the following:

• Basic, translational, and clinical projects.
• The project must seek to address an overarching, urgent scientific question.
• Sub-projects should be designed to elucidate various aspects of the overarching question, theme, or focus.
• The output of the individual team members (data, samples, hypotheses, compounds, etc.) must be integrated and/or shared in a way that makes the impact of the project as a whole larger than the sum of its parts.
• Proposed projects must not be supported by other sources of funding. Finalists will be asked to discuss any potential overlap with other current or pending awards.
• Projects addressing substantial unmet needs in any type of cancer are welcome, particularly teams with innovative ideas for therapeutic strategies for upper GI, glioblastoma, triple-negative breast cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

Deadlines

• CU Internal Deadline: 11:59pm MST August 4, 2025
• Sponsor Letter of Intent Deadline: September 3, 2025

Internal Application Requirements (all in PDF format)

• Project Type
  • Any Cancer Type
  • Translational or clinical stage project that primarily focuses on one of the following four types of cancer: upper GI, glioblastoma, triple-negative breast cancer, or pancreatic cancer.
• Project Description (3 pages maximumincluding figures and tables but excluding references): Please include: 1) Specific aims; 2) Introduction, background, description of unmet need; 3) Research plan broken into aims, with each aim having a clear objective; preliminary studies, if applicable; high-level description of the experimental approach; and milestones and timelines; 4) Future directions – if the research plan is successful, what is the 5-10-year vision for expansion of the project?
• PI Biosketch in NIH or similar format (5 pages maximum)
• Budget Overview (1 page maximum): A basic budget outlining project costs is sufficient; detailed OCG budgets are not required.

To access the online application, visit:

Eligibility

Teams must be composed of one PI and 2-8 co-PIs. PIs and Co-PIs must have independent faculty research appointments (tenure-track or equivalent). There are no restrictions on citizenship or geography.

Limited Submission Guidelines

No more than two applications may be submitted by any one institution.

The first submission from a given institution may address any cancer type. Institutions will be allowed a second submission as a host institution only for a translational or clinical stage project that primarily focuses on one of the following four cancer types: upper GI, glioblastoma, triple-negative breast cancer, or pancreatic.

Award Information

Award Amount: $3,000,000 over 3 years

Expected Number of Awards: 1

Review Criteria

The internal evaluation process will be guided by the foundation’s project eligibility section, per below.

• Scientific Significance: Does the project address a clearly defined, overarching, and urgent scientific question in cancer research?
• Project Design & Integration: Are sub-projects well-structured to explore distinct facets of the central question? Is there a clear plan to integrate and share outputs (e.g., data, samples, hypotheses) in a way that enhances overall impact?
• Innovation & Unmet Need: Does the project present innovative approaches or therapeutic strategies, particularly for cancers with substantial unmet needs (e.g., upper GI, glioblastoma, TNBC, pancreatic cancer)?
• Funding Overlap: Is the proposed work distinct from projects currently funded or pending elsewhere?
• Eligibility: Does the proposal fall within the scope of eligible project types (basic, translational, or clinical research)?