24th Institute Advisory Board Meeting

Institute of Infection and Immunity (III)
24th Advisory Board Meeting

May 14-15, 2008

Ramada Inn
Guelph, Ontario

Minutes

Present: L. Babiuk (Chair), L. Barreto, M. Grant, J. Guimond, W. Hill, J. Lavery, M. Loeb, J. Madrenas,
A. McGeer, M. Ouellette, C. Power, B. Singh (Scientific Director), D. Speert
Staff: J. Bray, D. Christin, J. Flamenbaum, D. Hartell, M. Hume, S. Lalumiere, C. Leneis, G. Malo,
A. Matejcic, B. Moor, J. Ralph, C. Richardson, O. Robledo, J. Shields
Regrets: R. Clarke, N. Rose, J. Stankova, G. Wu

Agenda

The agenda was approved with no changes (J. Madrenas, L. Barreto).

Minutes

The minutes of the January 23-24, 2008 IAB meeting were approved without changes (L. Barreto, W. Hill).

Report from the Scientific Director

B. Singh reported that L. Babiuk, founding Chair of Institute Advisory Board, will be retiring from the board this year. He praised Dr. Babiuk's national perspective and scientific knowledge in the areas of infection and immunity and thanked him for his leadership. W. Hill, A. McGeer and N. Rose will also be retiring from the board this year and B. Singh extended his gratitude to them for their contributions to the Institute. The new Chair and members will be appointed by CIHR Governing Council and announced in July.

CIHR announced in March that Alain Beaudet has been appointed as the new President of CIHR as of July 1, 2008. Dr. Beaudet was President and CEO of FRSQ from 2004 to 2008.

The Science Advisor to the Prime Minister has been replaced by a Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (SCIST). The S&T committee (STC) is chaired by Howard Alper and has 18 members. In the S&T strategy, four priorities were identified: Environmental Science and Technologies, Natural Resources and Energy, Health and Related Life Sciences and Technologies, Information and Communications Technologies. In the 2008 Federal budget CIHR received an increase of $34 million, bringing its base budget to about $850 million. Any additional requests from CIHR for federal funds must be in context with identified government priorities.

A new organizational structure has been implemented at CIHR in response to input received in the International Review, which recommended more involvement of scientific directors (and hence the Institutes that they lead) in the strategic management of the agency. The Research and Knowledge Translation Committee (RKTC) – comprised of the President, 13 Scientific Directors, Vice-Presidents, CFO and Director of Ethics – is charged with implementing research and knowledge translation strategy, including the approval of funding for all CIHR initiatives. The work of the RKTC is facilitated by 3 new subcommittees – Planning and Partnerships (SPP; chair is B. Singh), Programs and Peer Review (SPPR) and Performance Measurement (SPM). Board members were reminded that the Scientific Director represents a specific community within CIHR, and relies on the IAB for advice in carrying out his role within CIHR as well as in the infection and immunity community.

Progress on implementing programs which address Institute strategic priorities was reviewed with particular emphasis on funding opportunities to be launched this year. Catalyst grants will be launched in June 2008 under the "Novel Alternatives to Antibiotics" initiative and the "Canadian Microbiome Initiative (CMI)". A CMI team grant program is anticipated to launch in December 2008. A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between Italy and Canada, and a joint program with funding from Italy and Genome Canada will be launched in 2008, with one focus likely to be genomics of infections. Catalyst grants for the "Pandemic Preparedness Strategic Research Initiative" and "Systems Biology Approaches to Immune Modulation" will also be launched by the Institute in June. There will be a number of funding opportunities in HIV/AIDS in 2008, including one under the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative.

Finally, B. Singh gave a brief overview of five proposed strategic priority areas for CIHR:

  • Advancing the frontiers of health knowledge. Discovering, developing and testing innovative ideas, tools and technologies to improve health of Canadians
  • Enhancing Healthy life style. Promoting better health outcomes by addressing children and youth, ageing and gender factors, nutrition, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, physical exercise
  • Better mental health for all. Addressing neurodegenerative conditions; social, psychological and behavioural disorders
  • Provide solutions for acquired and inherited diseases. Addressing infections, new vaccines, immune disorders, cancer, genetic diseases, tissue regeneration, environmental and climate change
  • Discovering better health approaches for vulnerable and aboriginal communities. Access to healthcare system and health services, application of health knowledge and population health measures at home and abroad

Budget Update

Institute Support Grant (ISG)

The Institute continues to receive an annual ISG of $1 million and any unspent balance can be carried forward. The 2008-9 ISG budget is $1,410,780 as a result of carry forward from the previous year. Effective April 1, 2008 new Treasury Board guidelines dictate that Institutes cannot provide subgrants from their ISG. For fiscal year 2008-09, all Institutes received a new Institute Community Development (ICD) funding envelope, initially $100,000/year. ICD funds will be administered by CIHR in Ottawa under the direct authority of the Scientific Director. Initially, III will use the ICD for the Meetings, Planning and Dissemination (MPD) grants program.

Institute Strategic Budget

The nominal annual budget of $8 million per year is ongoing. Additional funds were received from PHAC in 2007-8 to support hepatitis C grants and from CIHR to support bridge funding grants for a total budget of $8,710,500. The Institute exceeded its budget by $104,896 in 2007-8. III bridge funding in 2007-8 totaled $1,152,919 (14 grants). Three of six III bridge funding recipients from the March 2007 competition were successful in the September 2007 open competition. RKTC has approved $3.6 million over 5 years additional funding for the Novel Alternatives to Antibiotics initiative, and $5 million over 5 years matching funds for the Canadian Microbiome Initiative. If all currently planned initiatives are implemented, the strategic budget will be fully committed in 2008-9 and 2009-10.

Guest Speaker

Dr. Mohamed Karmali, Director-General, Laboratory for Foodborne Zoonoses, Public Health Agency of Canada, made a presentation to the IAB entitled "Scientific Programs at the Lab for Foodborne Zoonoses (LFZ) and Office of Biotechnology, Genomics and Population Health (OBGPH): Opportunities for Linkages with CIHR". In his presentation, he highlighted the PHAC centres across Canada that are associated with the Laboratory in Guelph and summarized their work which ranges from surveillance and research to policy recommendations and evaluation. Dr. Karmali ended with a summary of opportunities for collaboration between their units and CIHR such as public health pathogenomics, ecology and epidemiology of emerging zoonotic pathogens and antimicrobial resistance, knowledge translation and evidence-based policies, and host genetic determinants of infectious diseases.

Strategic Priorities and Initiatives

HIV/AIDS
The revised CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Initiative Draft Strategic Plan was presented for IAB approval. The general consensus was that it represented a significant achievement and the Plan was approved by the Board (M. Grant, C. Power). A. Matejcic presented an overview and update on the CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Initiative, complete with a review of the funding breakdown by stream and a summary of competition results for grant and awards.

Canadian HIV Trials Network (CTN)
CTN received a favourable review during a site visit in January 2008 and was awarded a five-year grant for $4.54 million per annum.

Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative (CHVI)

CHVI will receive $111 million from the Government of Canada and $28 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for a total of $139 million. Discovery and social research is one of five components of CHVI and over the next five years will be supported by $10 million from CIHR and $12 million from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Emerging Infections and Microbial Resistance

Novel Alternative to Antibiotics

Funding initiatives for "Novel Alternatives to Antibiotics" – proof of principle, seed grants, collaborative health research projects, emerging team grant – were reviewed.

UK/Canada Workshop on Antibiotic Resistance – Beating the Bug

The UK/Canada Workshop organized by UK MRC, III and the Canadian High Commission was held at Canada House in Trafalgar Square, London on February 6/7, 2008. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together researchers with different perspectives on the problem of antibiotic resistance in order to address topics such as immune modulation, molecular determinants of resistance, clinical aspects and system biology approaches. J. Bray will be attending a meeting with MRC and Wellcome Trust on May 19 to discuss a potential partnership with CIHR, and received support from the Board for this initiative.

Canadian Microbiome Initiative

CIHR will match Institute and partner commitments for the CMI with up to $5 million over 5 years, bringing the potential total for the CMI to $10M. A workshop in Toronto will be held on June 15/16 at the Fairmont-Royal York with goals of mobilizing the community, identifying areas where Canada has strengths and creating linkages with international research groups working in this area.

Pandemic Influenza Preparedness

The Initiative is divided into three phases: prepandemic, outbreak and knowledge translation. The majority of prepandemic grants have been funded and efforts have been made to stimulate the research community to prepare for outbreak research. The Initiative is entering the third phase which focuses on uptake of research findings. An annual meeting of researchers and knowledge users will be held in Winnipeg on November 6-8, 2008 and a mid-term evaluation of the Initiative will be undertaken in 2008-09.

Immunotherapy

On January 22/23, 2008, III hosted a one and a half day invitational workshop in Montreal to explore the possibility of applying a systems biology approach to the study of immunotherapy, inflammation and immune-based diseases. The published workshop report "Systems Biology Approaches to Immune Modulation and Inflammation" is now available on the Institute website. III has committed funds to catalyst grants and the Collaborative Health Research Program to build capacity in the area.

Vaccines of the 21st Century

The Institute's commissioned report "Vaccines for the 21st Century: Taking Canada to the Next Level" summarizes Canadian accomplishments and strengths in vaccine and immunization research. The document highlights input from the research community on challenges and recommendations for advancing the vaccine research agenda. The report will be used by the Institute and partners to inform strategic planning for support of vaccine research.

Institute Directions in Knowledge Translation (KT)
III has contracted Judith Birdsell and Verna Skanes of On Management Health Group to outline knowledge translation activities carried out by III since its inception, summarize knowledge translation concepts as they relate to infection and immunity research and develop recommendations for key activities the Institute can undertake to support and facilitate KT. The consultants are currently conducting key informant interviews, collating relevant documentation and planning a workshop of key stakeholders in Ottawa on September 24/25, 2008. Goals of the workshop are to develop recommendations and an implementation plan for the Institute in the area of KT.

Institute Directions in Ethics

A committee – the "Caucus of IAB Ethics Designates" – has been formalized at CIHR and recognized by the CIHR Standing Committee on Ethics. Membership is comprised of ethics designates from each of the 13 Institute Advisory Boards, and in their last meeting terms of reference were developed along with a context for conflict of interest. The primary role of ethics designates on their respective IAB was thought to be to advance ethics issues with real relevance to the Institute, with an additional focus on putting forward ethics-related ideas for RFA. A meeting to review and prioritize RFA ideas is planned for September.

J. Lavery outlined 4 ethics projects that could be developed either by the Institute or collaboratively in conjunction with other Institutes:

  1. Development of a core course in research ethics, with appropriate summarization of the relevant literature.
  2. Inclusion of a research ethics component at educational workshops such as the New Investigator Forum.
  3. Assessing the relationship between the ethics literature and practice in research ethics review.
  4. An empirical analysis of research ethics review

After some discussion, especially on the issues surrounding research ethics review, the IAB supported advancing these 4 ideas at the fall meeting of the Caucus and recommended in particular the development of course materials that could be used in various contexts.

Recommendations for strategic investment

A summary of the current scenario for investment of the Institute's strategic budget taking into consideration possible launch dates for new funding opportunities, timelines for peer review and funding start dates was discussed. No changes to the current strategy were recommended.

Institute Affairs

New Investigator Forum
III will hold its third New Investigator Forum on April 17-19, 2009 at the Kingbridge Conference Centre north of Toronto. In the absence of volunteers from the Board at the meeting, Board members will be canvassed by email. J. Lavery volunteered to develop an "ethics in research" component for the Forum. As was done for previous events, the Institute will approach department chairs from universities across Canada to identify invitees.

Impact of Institute

The concepts for a project to document the impact of the Institute since its creation were presented by C. Richardson. The outcome report will inform the next formal evaluation of the Institute and international review of CIHR as well as provide communications material for the Institute.

Interdisciplinary Social Behavioural Report

A summary of the final reports of the "Social and Behaviour Research Issues in HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C – Interdisciplinary Capacity Enhancement (ICE) Teams Grant Program" was discussed. An early strategic initiative of the Institute, this ICE Teams Program provided infrastructure funding to enhance multi-disciplinary collaboration, knowledge translation activities, and capacity development. The four funded teams all indicated that the program had achieved most of its intended aims, although the principal investigators identified a need for extending this type of support to maturing teams in order to maximize program impacts.

Next IAB meeting

The next meeting of IAB will be on September 23-24, 2008 in Ottawa.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 11:40 a.m.