ABSTRACT: Career Enhancement Program (CEP) The mission of the MSCP SPORE Career Enhancement Program (CEP) is to stimulate basic, translational, and clinical research by recruiting and supporting new investigators in the area of melanoma and other skin cancers. The CEP provides financial resources for this mission, while the SPORE itself provides a supportive and stimulating research environment. In the most recent MSCP SPORE grant period, we supported 8 CEP awardees, all of whom were early-stage investigators (2 Instructors, 1 Research Assistant Professor and 5 Assistant Professors). CEP Awardees have experienced success in advancing their careers (with 6 receiving academic promotions and 1 assuming a senior leadership position in industry), publishing their work, and obtaining extramural funding. We will continue to solicit proposals via RFP 1-2 times/year and to use a peer- reviewed scoring system to prioritize proposals for funding (2-3/year at up to $75K each). The CEP and SPORE Co-Directors, RMC representatives, Internal and External Advisory Board members participate in the review process, together with Patient Advocates and additional experts who may be called upon if special reviewer expertise is necessary. The CEP will track progress of the successful applications and provide advisors to funded investigators to ensure that they obtain any needed services from the MSCP SPORE Cores and that they are fully-integrated into the SPORE program. Awardees present their research results to the SPORE investigators after one year of support in order to become eligible for a second year of support. Progress toward translation as well as likely impact and innovation determine whether ongoing CEP projects evolve into future full SPORE projects (as in the case of Projects 1 and 2 in the current application). Awardees will also be advised as appropriate in the preparation of grant applications for funding outside the SPORE mechanism and given access to Core resources to aid in this endeavor.