Notice of Upcoming Funding Opportunity: National Cancer Data and Bio-Resource Coordinating Hub Team Grants

Introduction

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of the National Cancer Data and Bio-Resource Coordinating Hub Team Grants. This funding opportunity is led by the CIHR Institute of Cancer Research (CIHR-ICR) with the Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) as a mandatory applicant partner.

Overview

Canada possesses a rich reservoir of health research data and biosample resources, supported by a thriving and rapidly evolving data science community. To fully realize the value of these assets, Canada must continue to strengthen timely, secure, and equitable access to data; enable effective linkages and interoperability across disparate data systems; and build advanced data science, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) capacity within the health research community. These efforts are essential to maximizing the impact of publicly funded research and ensuring that the benefits of health research accrue to all Canadians.

Over the past decades, significant federal and provincial investments have been made to advance data integration, stewardship, and accessibility across the research ecosystem (e.g., the Pan-Canadian Genome Library [PCGL], Advanced Research Collaboration for Health Integration, Medical Exploration, and Data Synthesis [ARCHIMEDES], Digital Health and Discovery Platform [DHDP], Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network [MOHCCN]). New initiatives, including the Canadian Research Data Platform (CRDP), aim to build on and connect these investments by advancing a coordinated, pan-Canadian approach to research data infrastructure. National initiatives such as the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath), Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Cohort Study, the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), and the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE) have laid critical foundations for high-quality data generation, stewardship, and analysis. By leveraging these foundational platforms within a trusted, federated environment – enabled by common standards, interoperable systems, robust governance, and privacy- and sovereignty-respecting practices – the collective value of Canada’s research data assets can be exponentially amplified, enabling cross-disciplinary, large-scale research that delivers measurable health and societal benefits for all Canadians.

Within this national context, the CIHR Institute of Cancer Research (CIHR-ICR) aims to foster a world-class cancer research data ecosystem in Canada, as articulated in its Research Priority Plan 2024-2029. One of the Institute’s three priority areas, Transform Cancer Research Through Data Strategy and Advanced Analytics, aims to support coordinated national data infrastructure, open science, and responsible data sharing, and the application of advanced analytics and AI in healthcare in Canada.

Purpose

This funding opportunity aims to establish a National Cancer Data and Bio-Resource Coordinating Hub that builds on Canada’s existing platforms, repositories, and initiatives to strengthen the national research data ecosystem. The Hub will advance a coordinated, interoperable, and trusted approach to data stewardship by enabling the integration, linkage, and responsible sharing of key research assets across Canada.

Cancer will serve as an initial domain focus to demonstrate how distributed, multi-modal research data assets across Canada can be discovered, accessed, and linked through a coordinated environment using appropriate models (e.g., federated approaches), creating a scalable blueprint for broader adoption across the health research ecosystem.

Mandatory Applicant Partner

Digital Research Alliance of Canada

The Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance) advances and maintains digital research infrastructure (DRI) to support the management, storage and use of national research computing, data and research software. The Canadian Research Data Platform (CRDP), led by the Alliance, is a national initiative designed to strengthen Canada’s research data ecosystem by enabling a coordinated, interoperable, and trusted approach to managing, sharing, and reusing research data in Canada. The National Data Spaces Program is a core component of the Alliance’s vision for the CRDP. National Data Spaces are envisioned as trusted, community-led digital ecosystems organized around a research domain, bringing together governance frameworks, common standards, shared services, and interoperable technical infrastructure to support the secure, ethical, and responsible use of data within that domain, while respecting community needs, jurisdictional requirements, and data sovereignty.

As such, the Alliance will work with the National Cancer Data and Bio-Resource Coordinating Hub to ensure infrastructure alignment and national coordination required to establish a cancer-specific National Data Space. Applicants receiving in-kind support from the Alliance will be required to include the Alliance as an applicant partner and a Letter of Support from the Alliance in their Full Application. In order to receive a Letter of Support, applicants must contact the Alliance at crdp-pcdr@alliancecan.ca.

Objectives

The specific objectives of this funding opportunity are to:

• Foster the sharing of data, expertise, and resources across Canada to drive innovation and collaboration, with a focus on leveraging AI to support cross-site data submission, harmonization, discovery, and sharing of multi-modal data.
• Develop a pan-Canadian framework that enables the collection, stewardship, management, and sharing of cancer data across distributed repositories and platforms, with the aim to promote reproducibility, rigour, and reuse of research outputs, while reducing duplication and operational inefficiencies across the ecosystem, in alignment with other national efforts, including the Canadian Research Data Platform.
• Support interdisciplinary team science by enabling secure and ethical sharing of data, expertise, and biosample resources among researchers across disciplines and jurisdictions, which is responsive to domain-specific needs of the cancer community.
• Strengthen national research capacity in integrating inclusive, intersectional, and innovative skillsets, technologies, and methods in data science, analytics, and AI into their research.
• Foster knowledge mobilization around implementation of best practices on responsible data management and sharing approaches that support open science, trusted reuse, and long-term public value from research investments.

These objectives are to be supported by the following key design elements:

• Strong community-led governance: The National Cancer Data and Bio-Resource Coordinating Hub must establish a robust, transparent, and accountable governance structure that supports coordination across stakeholders and jurisdictions, ensuring that all of the above objectives are met.
• Alignment with international and national standards: The Hub’s activities should be aligned with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) tools and standards should be utilized to enable collaborations nationally, and with international genomic efforts on data sharing, analysis, and knowledge exchange.
• Federated integration of multi-modal data: The Hub must support the incorporation and linkage of diverse multi-modal data types, including but not limited to multi-omic (e.g., genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbiomics), wearable, imaging, clinical, and histology data.
• Pan-Canadian scope and interoperability: The Hub must operate with a national perspective that will enable discovery, access, and analysis of health data across the country, governed in a transparent, accountable, and consistent way.

Applicants must demonstrate that they have an existing, operational data platform, repository, or digital infrastructure that will serve as the foundation on which the proposed cancer-specific National Data Space will be developed. The funding opportunity is intended to support the extension, integration, and scaling of existing assets, and not the creation of entirely new standalone platforms.

Webinar(s)

CIHR will be hosting webinar(s) to inform participants about the requirements of this funding opportunity and to answer questions. To find out more information and to register, visit the Webinars page.

Partner Linkage Tool

CIHR is providing a Partner Linkage Tool that is intended to facilitate connections between researchers, knowledge users, and applicant partners to support application development and the planning of knowledge mobilization and dissemination activities  should there be interest. This is not a mandatory tool. Information is provided on a volunteer basis and does not confer any advantages in the evaluation and funding of applications. The table will be updated weekly until the application deadline. If you would like to use this tool, please complete a short survey. The information you provide will appear on CIHR’s website. Please note that potential applicants are not required to use the linkage tool or contact those who have submitted their information.

Funds Available

The total amount available for this funding opportunity is anticipated to be up to $2,000,000, enough to fund approximately one (1) team grant.

The maximum amount per grant is anticipated to be $400,000 per year for up to five (5) years, for a total of $2,000,000 per grant.

Anticipated Timelines

Webinar: Fall 2026
Launch: Summer 2026
Application Deadline: Winter 2027
Funding Start Date: Summer 2027

The official CIHR funding opportunity will be posted on ResearchNet in the coming weeks.

For a full list of CIHR funding opportunities, please visit ResearchNet.

Contact Information

For general inquiries please contact:

CIHR Contact Centre
613-954-1968
support-soutien@cihr-irsc.gc.ca

Date modified:

2026-08-12