The art of SPORE grant-writing
Ada Watson with the 773-page application for the breast cancer SPORE.
What does it take to compile an application for a SPORE grant? An ability to collect and organize massive amounts of information from multiple sources. A willingness to put in long hours. Persistence in tracking down important details. Prowess in complex finances. A difficult blend of patience and urgency. Flexibility. Grace and humor under pressure.
Just ask Ada Watson of Dana-Farber's Cancer Biology Depart-ment, who oversaw the preparation of the 773-page breast cancer SPORE application (not to mention the 300-page appendix). Watson was recruited for the job by J. Dirk Iglehart, MD, after she offered to help. "Ada willingly took on a massive task and did it with such skill that she's now helping review other institutions' SPORE applications for the National Cancer Institute (NCI)," Iglehart notes.
A SPORE application is a huge tome that includes in-depth descriptions of each project and core facility, biographical data on principal investigators, financial information, and an assortment of tables, graphs, charts, and images. Compiling it means gathering information from dozens of sources, setting and meeting almost daily deadlines, and occasionally cracking the whip to make sure others provide data on time.
"The interchange of ideas among researchers in different disciplines is exciting to be a part of. It's that kind of interaction from which future cures are made."
— J. Dirk Iglehart, MD
Watson and her team juggled all that and more during the four months it took to complete the application. The result — project approval from the NCI — speaks for itself. "What gets SPOREs funded is the quality of their science," Watson asserts. "Our job is to provide the NCI with the best possible representation of that science. This was truly a joint project across the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. No one person made this work; it was a concerted effort by many departments and institutions."
