26th Institute Advisory Board Meeting
Institute of Infection and Immunity
26th Advisory Board Meeting
January 20-21, 2009
Delta Vancouver Suites, 550 W. Hastings
Vancouver, BC
Minutes
| Present: | L. Barreto, R. Clarke, R. Hogg, M. Grant, J. Guimond, S. Jones, J. Lavery (teleconference), M. Loeb, V. Loo, J. Madrenas, M. Ouellette, C. Power (Chair), B. Singh, J. Stankova, G. Wu |
| Staff: | J. Bray, D. Christin, D. Dempsey, J. Flamenbaum, D. Hartell, M. Hume, P. Kirton, S. Lalumiere, C. Leneis, G. Malo, A. Matejcic, B. Moor, J. Ralph, C. Richardson, J. Shields |
| Guests: | A. Anis, B. Finlay, J. Grimshaw, J. Johnson |
| Regrets: | P. Ernst, D. Speert |
Agenda and Minutes
Approval of the Agenda (M. Ouellette, L. Barreto)
Approval of the Minutes of Sept. 23-24, 2008 meeting (J. Madrenas, M. Grant)
Report from the Scientific Director
At the request of the President, A. Beaudet, the CIHR committee comprised of President, Vice-presidents and Scientific Directors (SDs), previously known as the Research and Knowledge Translation Committee (RKTC), has been renamed to the Scientific Council (SC) of CIHR. In the President's new vision, the SC is key to advancing the strategic scientific agenda of CIHR, and its important advisory role should be reflected by a title easily understood by those external to the organization. Effective management of an overall CIHR budget approaching $1 billion is a significant responsibility, and the Institutes, through the scientific directors, share this responsibility with Governing Council. With the new President and a number of new Scientific Directors, priorities for the SC are shifting, necessitating a more formal mechanism for bringing Institute-led initiatives to the attention of all SC participants. To achieve this, an Institute Roundtable session has been added to each SC agenda, and 2-3 Scientific Directors will make a presentation at each SC meeting. Cross-cutting initiatives are also being re-examined, and only the most relevant to the CIHR mission and government priorities will continue. An example is the Clinical Research Initiative, which plans to focus on patient-centred research under the new leadership of P. Hebert. The collective intention is to provide national leadership for health research under the umbrella of Blueprint II, the new CIHR strategic plan.
The $34 million increase to the CIHR budget, announced by the government in its 2008 federal budget, has finally been made available to CIHR, and will enable a range of new funding initiatives as well as reducing across the board cuts to the open competition. As a funding increase for CIHR in 2009 is in doubt, the SC has recommended a greater use of one-year, catalyst-type grants to reduce the impact that longer term commitments would have on maintaining a reasonable success rate, especially in the open competition. For the Institute, catalyst grants are particularly useful to introduce new strategic areas prior to the launch of a major initiative.
The Human Pathogens and Toxins Act will be re-introduced to Parliament and its passage into law is expected. Some consultations will take place across Canada, and there will be opportunities for the research community to have input on the implementation "schedule of regulations". Implementation training may be provided, but new funds for this purpose are unlikely; implementation will be the responsibility of institutions. The Minister of Public Security, Stockwell Day, is the government leader for this legislation, which is driven in part by a response to a US executive order titled "Strengthening Laboratory Biosecurity in the United States".
Institute Affairs – Budgets
The Institute of Infection and Immunity manages multiple funding pools for strategic purposes:
- Institute Strategic Initiative budget
- Institute Support Grant
- Institute Community Development budget
- CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Initiative
- The CIHR Pandemic Preparedness Research Initiative.
The status of the first 3 of these was reviewed in this part of the meeting; the latter 2 were presented in the context of the appropriate report on activities.
The nominal annual ISI budget is $8.5 million; in 2008-9, the actual budget was augmented to $11.2 million through additional allocations. Of this, $3.1 million was available for new initiatives in 2008-9, including catalyst grants in Safe Food and Water in Northern Communities, Human Microbiome, and Immunotherapy-Systems Biology and a larger than planned commitment ($900K) to provide bridge funding for operating grants in the September open competition. It was anticipated that about $2.6 million would be allocated to these purposes. Review of the planned expenditures in 2009-10 and beyond prompted discussion of the merit of increased use of one year grants, particularly for bridge funding. While this supports the III community and is useful for budget management, members of the board were reminded of the Institute's responsibility to direct ISI funding to strategic programs, as opposed to open competitions. A proposal to launch a one-year grant funding opportunity directed specifically to new investigators was discussed; this was supported by the Board provided that a focus on strategic research priorities of the Institute was integrated into the opportunity.
The Institute Support Grant budget ($1.4 million in 2008-9) is used to fund Institute operations including directly funded meetings organized by the Institute. This budget cannot be used to fund grants.
The Institute Community Development budget of $100K annually is currently being used to support the Meetings, Planning and Dissemination grant program of the Institute.
Strategic Priorities and Initiatives
Knowledge Translation (KT) Initiative
The KT project was intended to provide an overview of knowledge translation activities carried out by III since its inception and to develop recommendations for key activities the Institute can undertake to support and facilitate KT in infection and immunity research. The IAB KT committee (W. Hill, J. Guimond, L. Jurkovic, C. Richardson) addressed this objective by contracting ON Management Consultants to prepare the overview, draft a KT framework to provide structure for the Initiative, and organize a stakeholder consultation. The consultation was held in September in Ottawa immediately following the IAB meeting.
Outcomes from the process included the KT framework, a report with priorities and suggested actions (capacity building, facilitation and brokering, evaluation and dissemination of lessons learned and facilitation of translational research), and the establishment of KT as an important activity for the III research community. It is planned to use these inputs to develop a funding opportunity to advance Institute-related KT. While some Board members advised caution in forcing this agenda, it was noted that CIHR will be evaluated on the way it delivers its KT mission and must show progress in this area. More rapid and effective translation of research results is the goal, and it was the opinion of some that the younger generation of researchers was prepared to deliver on this aspect of the CIHR mission.
Vaccines of the 21st Century
A major activity in 2008 was the commissioning of the report "Vaccines for the 21st Century: Taking Canada to the Next Level". The publication provides an overview of Canadian vaccine-related research, documents Canadian accomplishments, and reports on results from a researcher survey which asked for recommendations on activities which would facilitate the researchers' access to existing funding opportunities and promote translation of discoveries. A number of research priorities were identified as well. The report provided input data for an invitational funders workshop held Jan. 16, 2009. Attendees appreciated the positive tone of the report and the documentation of Canadian contributions, contributions which are undervalued in the international context. A report on the workshop will be developed, and will summarize the recommendations of the participants regarding research priority areas, the potential for collaborative vaccine research investment opportunities, and approaches to advance vaccine scientific development in Canada. Development of a funding opportunity for the December 2009 launch is also planned.
It was proposed that industry would support research on effective ways to communicate efficacy and safety of vaccines. An emphasis on systems biology approaches to vaccine research, especially for an HIV vaccine, was also suggested by members of the Board.
Canadian Microbiome Initiative (CMI)
The Institute organized a Funders Meeting in November 2008 in Toronto to assess the interest of the funding community in partnering with III in support of the CMI team grants planned for the June 2009 launch. At least $7.5 million in funding has been committed, and there is interest from a number of potential partners who have not yet made financial commitments. Research areas for the team grants will be unrestricted, but applications on immune interaction, human virome, gastrointestinal and oral areas will be encouraged. Teams will also be expected to address ethical, legal and social issues and to make use of relevant established cohorts wherever practical.
Catalyst grants launched by III in December 2008 had garnered internal CIHR support from the HIV Initiative, the Ethics Office and the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes.
Emerging Infections and Drug Resistance
The historical activities of the Institute relating to the theme of antibiotic resistance were reviewed as a preface to the planned strategic initiative in collaboration with the UK Medical Research Council (UK-MRC). A funding opportunity launched in December 2008 will provide strategy development grants to teams forming Canadian/UK collaborations in the area of antibiotic resistance. The development grants will be jointly funded by the Institute and UK-MRC, and successful applicants are expected to develop joint research proposals for a potential second round of consortium funding or other funding opportunities.
The UK-MRC and CIHR have an agreement in principle to provide $4 million each in support of a large scale team initiative in 2010. Of the CIHR money, $2 million over 4 years has been planned in the Institute ISI budget, and a request for the remaining $2 million from CIHR will be put to the CIHR Scientific Council in the coming months. Development of an agreement between CIHR and the UK-MRC to formalize the collaboration will take place over the next year.
Inflammation and Systems Biology
Analysis of the CIHR funding database indicates that up to $49 million was invested in 2007/8 by CIHR in inflammation-related research. Most of the grants are relevant in some way to the Institute of Infection and Immunity, and almost all the other CIHR Institutes have a stake in this area as well. Preliminary discussions have been held within CIHR to consider the development of a large scale cross-cutting initiative focused on the inflammation theme, and a systems biology approach to the issue has been proposed. Support for the concept comes also from the Institute's systems biology catalyst grant competition, where at least 2 of the funded projects have an inflammation theme. Board members suggested that a mechanism- or technology-based lens as opposed to a tissue- or disease-based approach might best serve investigation into syndromes involving inflammation, and examination of the role of commensal flora for example might be of significant utility in some cases. It was noted that inflammation has been shown to protect individuals from future challenges by infectious organisms in certain situations.
Evaluation of CIHR Open Operating Grants Program
The Open Operating Grants Program (OOGP) accounts for over $480 million (>50%) of the CIHR budget and over 50 peer-review are committees involved. It is a core program for CIHR, but to date little consideration has been given to whether the program contributes to fulfilling the CIHR mandate in a direct and understandable way. As a result, the CIHR Scientific Council (SC) has been charged with defining the role of the OOGP and will begin this process at a retreat in February 2009. B. Singh described the framework for that discussion along with a number of identified issues under the headings of "peer review" and "funding review criteria", and requested input from the Board that would assist him in the upcoming discussion.
Members of the Board agreed that there were difficulties inherent in the current model; there was a general sense of fatigue relating to reviewing, applying for funding, and managing multiple grants. While new triage procedures for peer review were streamlining the actual review process, recruiting and managing review committees is a significant challenge which is exacerbated by the large number of applications received each cycle. It was suggested that programmatic grants with modular components for established investigators could help reduce the application pressure and might also permit more participation of senior investigators as peer reviewers. Reviewer pools, compulsory participation as reviewers by funded investigators, and some sort of practical compensation for being a reviewer were also proposed. Efforts to standardize the review committee process to reduce discrepancies in committee behaviour were seen as necessary. Overall, there was a sense that the OOGP was fundamental to delivering on the CIHR mission, but that certain changes to procedure might improve the consistency, accountability and efficiency of delivering the program.
Concern was expressed about the impact of the review of the OOGP on the CIHR scientific community, with some speculating that resources dedicated to the program may be allocated to more targeted areas; the "patient-centred research" terminology was cited as an example. The Board was assured that resources for the OOGP are not threatened; as the largest single CIHR program, it will continue to support Canadian scientific innovation. Institute strategic programming and cross-cutting programs like the Clinical Research Initiative are accountable for focused development in specific areas and increasing international competitiveness within those areas.
Institute of Gender and Health
Dr. Joy Johnson, the new Scientific Director of the Institute of Gender and Health (IGH) now based at the University of British Columbia, gave a presentation on the IGH strategic plan, "Gender Matters". Major strategic directions of the plan, which is to be launched in February 2009, are "Enhancing the Effectiveness of Clinical Interventions" and "Violence and Health: Impacts and Implications", and these will be examined in the context of the IGH mission of examining issues of gender and sex throughout life. She noted that studying intervention research is best done through links to public health organizations, and IGH is a strong proponent of the CIHR "Partnerships in Health System Improvement (PHSI)" program to enable this type of research.
In response to a question about the previous IGH focus on health inequities, Dr. Johnson indicated that the violence and health theme could be viewed from the perspective of northern communities, which is a focus that the Institute remains interested in, but continuation of a specific health inequities program is not planned at this time.
CTN Update
Dr. Aslam Anis, National Co-director of the Canadian HIV Trials Network (CTN) and a member of the Institute's CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Advisory Committee (CHARAC), provided IAB members with an up to date summary of the mandate and activities of CTN. The CTN is a Canada-wide partnership of researchers, caregivers, governments, health advocates, pharmaceutical companies and people living with HIV/AIDS who are committed to developing treatments, preventions and a cure for HIV and AIDS, through the conduct of scientifically sound and ethical trials. The Network does not generally fund trials itself, but provides infrastructure, services and training capacity to facilitate controlled trials focused on HIV. It receives significant funding from CIHR (approx. $4.5M annually) which was renewed in 2008 for a 5 year term after a thorough peer review process.
Dr. Anis contrasted the current plans for CTN with its historical structure. Increased emphasis will be placed on "Research Core" areas – anti-retroviral therapies; clinical management science; coinfections, concurrent diseases and vulnerable populations; vaccines and immunotherapies. These areas will shape the type of trials supported by the network and decrease the time taken from study concept to trial implementation. The research cores should also enhance the capacity development activities of the CTN.
In response to questions, Dr. Anis noted that trial recruitment, traditionally a difficult and variable process, had increased in the last year or so, probably due to a larger population of HIV+ individuals co-infected with other pathogens (e.g. Hcv). The CTN also has undertaken trials which are of less interest to industry, but which will provide data leading directly to improved care for the HIV infected population. Recruitment into such trials is challenging, but since opinion leaders can be critical factors in recruiting trial participants, the leaders of the research cores are anticipated to be more effective in stimulating the recruitment of participants for future trials.
Strategic Priorities and Initiatives
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Strategic Initiative (PPSRI)
The PPSRI, established in 2006 with $21.5 million in federal funding over 5 years, has expanded to $41 million with additional funds from partners. The Initiative has launched 12 different types of funding opportunities and has actual or planned commitments of $35 million to date, with 51 nominated principal investigators receiving grants. Applications for the largest single component of the PPSRI, the Influenza Research Network ($10.8 million over 3 years), are due in February, 2009.
The PPSRI held the first of its anticipated annual meetings in Winnipeg on November 6-8, 2008. Goals of the meeting were to present and discuss recent research results, facilitate networking and collaboration, and identify research needs and gaps. The meeting was well attended, with 152 participants (a mixture of researchers and knowledge users), and feedback to the organizers was extremely positive. A report on the meeting has been prepared and will be posted on the Institute website.
A mid-term evaluation of the PPSRI is underway, with the evaluation framework finalized and key informant interviews underway. A researcher survey will be undertaken in February and the evaluation report is anticipated to be available by the end of March 2009.
HIV/AIDS Research Initiative
Total direct funding for the CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Initiative is currently $22.5 million annually. This is divided into dedicated funding streams – Biomedical/Clinical ($8.9 million), Health Services/Population Health ($5.2 million), CTN ($4.5 million), CBR ($2.8 million) and CHVI ($1 million). All of these streams are managed under the supervision of the CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Advisory Committee (CHARAC).
In 2006, CHARAC struck a working group to consider ways to identify solutions for the low application levels and success rate in the Health Services/Population Health stream. The result was a funding opportunity entitled "Centres for Population Health and Health Services Research Development". Launched in December 2007, the opportunity received 9 letters of intent, of which 5 were awarded application development support. Following peer review, up to 3 centres will be funded in June 2009 at $500,000 per annum for 5 years. The intent of the centres is to mobilize research talent and increase research productivity by stabilizing core infrastructure for multi-disciplinary teams.
CIHR, along with CIDA, PHAC, Industry Canada, Health Canada and the Gates Foundation, is a partner on the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, which will invest $139 million over the next 5 years. CIHR will manage the $22.5 million Discovery and Social Research stream, and has launched operating, catalyst and priority announcement operating grant funding opportunities to date. A large scale team grant competition is expected to be launched in February. Other CHVI activities include clinical trial capacity building, and a pilot scale manufacturing facility for clinical trial lots. Four groups have been invited to submit full proposals for the latter, and following independent review in May, the federal cabinet will make the final decision. Gates Foundation support is primarily directed to the manufacturing facility, and federal matching funds for the facility must be "new", not re-allocated.
The HIV Community-Based Research Program review is almost finished, with the final stage stakeholder consultation completed in December 2008. Recommendations will address awareness and promotion, the application process, merit review, administration, funding tools, and requirements for the release of funding. Once the report is final, a response and 3 year implementation plan will be developed.
Institute Affairs
SARS Evaluation
The CIHR SARS initiative is undergoing a formal evaluation, led by the Institute in collaboration with the Evaluation and Analysis Branch of CIHR. The scope of the evaluation encompasses the four funding opportunities launched which were focused on SARS, and the intent is to document the outcomes and impacts of the funded research grants. Data will be obtained from a researcher survey, end of grant reports, patents and a bibliometric analysis, among other sources. To date, surveys have identified molecular targets for therapeutic vaccines, new anti-virals, a new model for ethics review during public emergencies, and a number of other impact areas. The report is anticipated to be completed in March, and will be posted on the Institute website. It was noted that this was a good opportunity for the Institute to promote the knowledge translation aspects of the report, and members of the Board recommended wide distribution.
Outcomes from "Models to Investigate the Link Between the Mucosal Immune Response in the Lung and Respiratory Tract and Disease Outcomes" Funding Opportunity
A draft report on outcomes this funding opportunity was circulated to the Board for comment. Using data from questionnaires sent to the principal investigators, the report summarizes most of the funded projects and provides brief descriptions of outcomes identified by the researchers. Members of the Board were impressed with the draft, but suggested that the document include links to publications and a disclaimer that the opinions expressed were those of the researchers, not CIHR or the Institute.
CIHR Ethics Office Initiatives
A substantial revision of the Tri-council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans was posted in December for consultation on the Panel on Research Ethics website. The consultation will be open until at least March 31, 2008, and Board members are strongly encouraged to review the document and submit their comments.
Institute Impact
A draft version of the report "The Impacts of the CIHR Institute of Infection and Immunity 2000-2008" prepared by Mark Bisby and Michelle Campbell was distributed to the Board. Members were requested to review the report and provide feedback by February 2009.
Cochrane Collaboration
Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw, Director of the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre, provided a summary of the Network's structure and activities. The Cochrane Centre, funded by CIHR, six CIHR Institutes (including III), and the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, is responsible for coordinating network sites at 17 universities across Canada. These sites are engaged in contributing to systematic reviews in a wide range of topic areas; these reviews are published and distributed by the international Cochrane Collaboration. The sites can be directed by a Canadian-based group (e.g. the Inflammatory Bowel Disease & Functional Bowel Disorders Group based at the University of Western Ontario), or host contributing authors/editors for groups based in international settings. The goal of the Cochrane Collaboration aims to help people make well-informed decisions about healthcare by preparing, maintaining, and promoting the accessibility of systematic reviews of the effects of healthcare interventions. The systematic review methodology assists in making the clinical research literature more accessible to researchers, clinicians and health care administrators.
The Canadian Centre also carries out translation of lay research summaries for non-profit disease specific sites, carries out requested systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and organizes workshops to train individuals in systematic review methodology. Dr. Grimshaw recognized the support of the Institute, and was interested in contributing to the Institute's knowledge translation mandate.
The Meeting was adjourned at 12:10 p.m. on January 21, 2009.