ABSTRACT, Developmental Funds Developmental funds are a critical component of the budget used to invest in new innovations, valuable shared resources, and key areas of research. In the coming project period, the IUSCC will use developmental funds to address the following aims: 1: To identify the most promising and innovative pilot projects in cancer research. Cultivate and catalyze new research collaborations and teams around the strengths of our center through continued investment in our pilot funding program. Priority is given to the most innovative projects that could lead to future NCI-sponsored research that leads to reduced incidence and mortality rates or increased quality of life for cancer patients in Indiana and beyond; 2: To facilitate collaborative research projects and how they are conducted to maximize their success. All award recipients are mentored and monitored through the novel IUSCC Translational Research Acceleration Collaboration (ITRAC) Project Management Process. Special emphasis is made to optimize use of IUSCC Cores and to encourage collaborations towards multi-PI grant proposals; 3: To conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation of all projects. Once approved for funding, all projects are monitored and evaluated using the ITRAC process of IUSCC. This process has been used for monitoring and evaluating all IUSCC Pilot Funded Projects since 2006. Written progress reports are submitted to the IUSCC leadership council (LC) and executive committee (EC) for review of progress. In addition, the EAB and IAB reviews the progress at their annual meetings; and 4: To develop the Translational Research Core (TRC). The TRC has been developed to assist investigators, both clinical and basic scientists, with developing and performing in-house drug development of Phase I clinical trials. The TRC also performs correlative biological assays needed to validate mechanism(s) of action of candidate drugs/therapies and to develop and test new hypotheses.