{"entity":{"id":"idea-fund-fast-grants-oncology","kind":"idea","name":"Forty-eight-hour small grants for bold experiments in neglected cancers","aka":[],"tldr":"Fast grants for oncology would be a fund that decides within two days on small grants for quick, decisive experiments in cancers or questions that mainstream funders neglect, modelled on the pandemic-era Fast Grants.","summary":"Fast Grants during COVID-19 funded hundreds of projects with 48-hour decisions and a one-page application; several delivered results, and recipients reported that speed, not just money, changed what they attempted. A cancer version would target neglected cancers and unfashionable questions (cachexia, metastasis models, surgical technique, repurposed drugs) with awards of $10,000 to $500,000, pre-registration of the key experiment, and a public results record including failures.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Fast Grants","url":"https://fastgrants.org/"}],"tags":[],"related":["idea-fund-neglected-cancer-lottery","idea-fund-phase-zero-fund"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-funding-allocation","b-translational-valley"],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"hypothesis":"Fast, small grants targeted at neglected areas produce at least as many follow-on funded projects and published results per dollar as conventional awards, with a median time from idea to first data of under six months.","rationale":"Fast Grants surveys found that most recipients would change their research direction if funding were flexible and fast; conventional cycles take a year from idea to money. Small, quick tests are the right instrument for exploratory work in areas where there is little prior art to justify a big grant.","test":"Run the fund for two years, tracking time to first result, publication and follow-on funding rates, and compare with a matched sample of conventional small grants from the same funder.","maturity":"speculative","actor":"philanthropy","cost":"medium","horizonYears":2},"route":"/ideas/idea-fund-fast-grants-oncology/","neighbours":{"idea":[{"id":"idea-fund-phase-zero-fund","kind":"idea","name":"A phase 0 fund to test academic compounds in humans with microdoses and imaging","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-phase-zero-fund/"},{"id":"idea-fund-neglected-cancer-lottery","kind":"idea","name":"Partial lottery funding for good proposals in under-funded cancers","route":"/ideas/idea-fund-neglected-cancer-lottery/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-funding-allocation","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Funding follows fashion, not burden","route":"/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/"},{"id":"b-translational-valley","kind":"bottleneck","name":"The valley of death between lab and product","route":"/bottlenecks/b-translational-valley/"}]}}