# An annual map of high-burden questions that nobody is funding

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-white-space-map/  
OnCo record `idea-fund-white-space-map` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Mine grant databases and the literature to find cancer types and questions with heavy burden and zero active projects, then publish the list so funders and scientists can go there.

## Summary

Cross the burden matrix (cancer type by stage by question: prevention, detection, metastasis, resistance, supportive care) against active grants, registered trials and recent publications to identify 'white space': cells with high burden and little or no activity. Publish a ranked list each year with suggested first experiments, and pair it with a dedicated call. Language models can classify grant abstracts and trial registrations at scale, which makes the map cheap to maintain.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Publishing a white-space map with a linked call raises the number of funded projects in the ten highest-burden empty cells by at least fivefold within three years, compared with equally empty cells not highlighted.
- Rationale: Funding follows visibility; the Open Targets and Illuminating the Druggable Genome programmes showed that simply cataloguing understudied proteins and offering targeted money moved researchers into them. The same mechanism should work for clinical questions.
- Proposed test: Build the map for one country from public grant and trial data; randomise which white-space cells are highlighted in a call and compare subsequent application volume between highlighted and control cells.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: data

## Sources

- Illuminating the Druggable Genome: https://commonfund.nih.gov/idg

## Connected records

- collections: [ClinicalTrials.gov](https://onco.cc/collections/clinicaltrials-gov/), [Open Targets Platform](https://onco.cc/collections/open-targets/), [PubMed & Europe PMC](https://onco.cc/collections/pubmed-europepmc/)
- ideas: [A public dashboard of research money per death for every cancer](https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-fund-dollars-per-death-dashboard/)
- bottlenecks: [Failures are hidden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-negative-results/), [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/idea-fund-white-space-map.json