30th Institute Advisory Board Meeting - Institute of Infection and Immunity

May 6-7, 2010
Fairmont Château Frontenac
Québec, QC

Draft Minutes

Present:	L. Barreto, E. Brown, R. Duncan, P. Ernst, M. Grant, A. Jevnikar, S. Jones, M. Karmali, V. Loo, C. Power, B. Ward, G. Wu
Staff:	J. Bray, C. Brochu, D. Christin, S. Desnoyers, J. Gunning, A. Matejcic, M. Ouellette, M. Perrault, J. Raven, M. Sajedi
Regrets:	J. Guimond, J. Stankova

Agenda and Minutes

C. Power suggested moving the presentation of the HIV/AIDS initiative to Thursday instead of Friday, since he and M. Grant need to leave tonight. No objections. (B. Ward, G. Wu).

A correction was made to the minutes from the December 15-16, 2009 IAB meeting: Vivian Loo was not present. Motion to accept revised minutes (G. Wu, A. Jevnikar)

Scientific Director's Report

As part of the CIHR Health Research Roadmap, 13 concept papers are being developed by the Institutes, and each paper will address an aspect of the 4 strategic priorities, as outlined in the Roadmap. The first drafts of the concept papers are due to the SPP on May 10, 2010, after which time the lead institutes will receive feedback on their proposals. Revised concept papers will be evaluated by Scientific Council (SC), and the selected proposals will move on to business case development.

CIHR is also undertaking its second International Review. Each institute must prepare a document to highlight the contributions it has made to the scientific community through strategic investments. The first draft of the international review document is due June 15, 2010, and the next is due September 8, 2010. The international review panel is set for February 2011, and the committee is being built. The chair of the committee will be Elias Zerhouni, the former chair of the NIH.

III has received a large number of requests for international collaboration from countries that CIHR has existing memoranda of understanding (MOU) with, including China, India and Japan. Such collaborations are encouraged by the president of CIHR, who often approaches an SD to support the application. The China-Canada Joint Health Research Initiative has been supported by III in the past, and M. Ouellette would like the Institute to continue contributing at the same level of $225K/year for 3 years. The ultimate goal of these programs is to create links and collaborations between China and Canada, but at present it is too early to look at the metrics of previous investments as they are ongoing. In addition, a workshop between Canada and China looking at vaccines will take place in May, which may provide an opportunity to expand into another MOU with additional funds for grants. Japan is looking for support for its child health program. There is some uncertainty about the source of the funding for these initiatives, whether it comes from the $6.5 million strategic budget, or the $1.5 million fund for level 1 and 2 initiatives. This needs to be clarified in order to properly align this spending with the priorities of the institute. As this is a pre-existing program, it may not be subject to the new spending rules, however if it is, it may limit the amount of our discretionary budget. G. Wu motions that we honour the current commitments, but refrain from making further commitments until the relevant financial issues are clarified. R. Duncan points out that this might align very well with the III priorities, and that not supporting it might constitute a missed opportunity since China will be matching any funds that CIHR contributes.

The Governing Council (GC) has requested that the number of members on the IAB be decreased from 15 to 14. The goal of this reduction is believed to be to reduce the number of government "employees," and save money on meeting and travel costs. Committee expenses are viewed as overhead costs, and it is an easy thing to cut. This may present a problem as the point of the IAB is to have a committee that represents the diversity of our community, and that lowering the number of members will make this more difficult and may make the IAB work sub-optimally. III reaches out to a large number of people, and as such need a large number of board members to cover the community. At present, all institutes advisory boards have the same number of members, even though the relative size of the communities is significantly different. Furthermore, the existence of virtual institutes in a country as large as Canada requires that people come together to meet.

Budget

The III strategic budget was presented, along with possible options for the unallocated funds. Launching a single-institute initiative takes about 12-18 months, so we need to quickly decide what we want to do. Due to other obligations, it might be best to wait until the September IAB meeting, and then have a concrete plan of what III is going to do. By then we will have more information regarding the concept papers as well as our own initiatives. The initiatives within the concept papers will take approximately two years to get off the ground, so we have approximately 2 years of available funds that may be allocated. In 2010-11, we have $400K to invest, and for 2011-12, $1.2M. At this time, we do not have time to launch any new programs, so the best approach may be to supplement existing programs. Some options include the Canadian Microbiome Initiative (in the case of a potentially low success rate), network development grants to sustain teams, and bridge funding. At a full-Institute staff meeting in March, it was decided to fund one network grant in vaccines and another within the mandate of III, however there is some concern that if we invest in an existing initiative, it might tie up the money for a longer period and reduce our flexibility for other initiatives. An investment in network development grants (a suite of KT programs that are one year in duration and include knowledge synthesis, MPD and knowledge-to-action grants) would help to fulfill our KT mandate. These could be launched as PAs, which are less labour intensive for the staff, and might also benefit sun-setting projects that are currently receiving support from III.

International Review

The III International Review report will be a 25-page document, and will likely include summaries of the HIV/AIDS initiative, the Pandemic Preparedness initiative and other projects undertaken by the institute. The first draft is due on June 15, and the institute is seeking input from the IAB about additional content of the report. Each institute is required to highlight 3 initiatives in total. Possibilities for spotlight initiatives include the HIV/AIDS research initiative, PPSRI, SARS, antibiotic resistance, safe food and water, and clinical autoimmunity, among others. In addition to our past performance, we would also take our future considerations into account when determining what to include in our report. While the primary emphasis should be the investment of our strategic funds, we are also able to highlight the achievements of investigators who list III as their primary institute affiliation. Elias Zerhouni, the chair of the International Review committee, was very committed to translational research during his tenure at the NIH. He also has strong ideas about what organizations should contribute to translational research, so perhaps we should put a strong emphasis on the KT aspect of what we do. Ultimately, the International Review committee reports to the GC, which is reviewing the institutes very closely. It is likely that the amount of money that each institute receives will be reviewed, which may benefit III if the review is favourable. However, if CIHR is thinking about reducing the number of institutes, our report should clearly indicate that III is indispensable to the Canadian research community, and that several initiatives or challenges would not have been addressed without III. Suggestions for the 3 areas to be highlighted: HIV/AIDS, emerging threats (influenza, SARS, safe food and water) and antibiotic resistance. It was also suggested that we include quotes from junior investigators about the effect of new investigator training grants on their long-term career, as this could be relevant to the role III has played in community development. As another review will be performed in 5 years, it might be advantageous to have a system in place that could be implemented for further reviews.

Update on Current III Business

HIV/AIDS Research Initiative

Several positions on the CIHR HIV/AIDS Research Advisory Committee (CHARAC) are up for renewal, while the tenure of some other members has ended. The memberships of Michael Grant (chair), Marina Klein (HIV/AIDS researcher), Martin Schechter (IHSPR) and Benedikt Fischer (INMHA) have been renewed and new members Shari Margolese (community representative), Eric Cohen (HIV/AIDS researcher) and Judy Mill (HIV/AIDS researcher) were proposed. These nominations were approved (G. Wu, P. Ernst).

The funding breakdown, funded projects and committed funds over the next 5 years was outlined. The Canadian HIV vaccine initiative (CHVI) was summarized as a partnership between the Government of Canada (GoC) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). The GoC has various agency partners in this project, including PHAC, CIHR, Health Canada, Industry Canada and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The goal of this initiative is to support coordinated Canadian and international contribution to global efforts to accelerate development of safe, effective, affordable and globally accessible HIV vaccine. CIHR currently funds over $7M annually in HIV vaccine research, included as part of CIHR's $40M annual investment in HIV/AIDS research. Funding mechanisms for the CHVI include: team grants, operating grants and catalyst grants. Funds were also allocated to build a vaccine manufacturing facility, but this plan was cancelled in February 2010. Discussions are currently underway between the relevant stakeholders to determine how best to use these funds. The research topics that can be funded are broad, as long as there is a potential impact for the HIV community. CIHR is not currently contributing any additional funds, but will provide the peer review framework for any launched programs. If the program does lead to high-level vaccine development, we might be able to leverage that for the priorities of the III, such as Vaccines of the 21st Century. A new initiative examining co-morbidity issues in HIV/AIDS has also been launched. This initiative is currently in stage I: the national stakeholder consultation level, and stage II: launch of knowledge synthesis and catalyst grants.

Pandemic Preparedness Strategic Research Initiative

The Pandemic Preparedness Strategic Research Initiative will be ending in March 2011. As this is the last year of the initiative there are no new funding opportunities being launched or started, therefore the focus is on KT activities, in particular the Canadian Pandemic Preparedness Annual Meeting. This year, the meeting is scheduled for November 12-13 in Montréal. J. Raven, M. Sajedi and a task group of 6 researchers (chaired by Earl Brown, University of Ottawa) are in the process of organizing the meeting. The planned format of the meeting will include a mixture of plenary lectures, breakout sessions and poster presentations. Investigators who received funding under the PPSRI will be invited, and registration opened to the rest of the community. As pandemic influenza is still a high profile issue that the public is very interested in, this meeting is a good public relations opportunity for CIHR and III. M. Ouellette stated that CIHR needs to do a better job in the future of showing the outcomes of supported programs, and will try to write an editorial for the Canadian Medical Association Journal on our activities to fund pandemic research. This will be especially important because of the backlash that the WHO is facing over the outbreak, and the suggestions that the scientific community overreacted.

Human Microbiome Initiative

M. Ouellette, C. Power, E. Brown and B. Ward excused themselves from this discussion due to a conflict of interest.
As the review of the Emerging Team Grants: Canadian Microbiome Initiative will soon be complete, a discussion was held to develop a policy to decide who will be funded. There is currently no process in place to rank the applications, and it is important to eliminate the appearance of any conflict of interest, since several IAB members are co-applicants. This discussion focused on our target funding rate for the program, the number of fundable applications, and what our approach should be. Other institutes have partnered with us on this initiative, but wish to support applications that are in line with their specific mandates. The Canadian Microbiome Initiative is funded using a top-down system rather than funding pools, which means that depending on the ranking of the applications, funding of an additional grant by III could significantly increase the overall success rate. The board decided that if necessary, III will fund up to three applications in total, but the conditions need to be set ahead of time. A. Jevnikar, S. Jones, G. Wu, V. Loo and R. Duncan will look at the blinded review scores and the associated institutes of the applications to make the final funding decisions.

Canada-UK Partnership

This program receives $1M/year from CIHR (50% corporate, 50% III), and another $1M from the corresponding agency in the UK. The MOU is ready to be signed, and the program will be launched in September, from which two grants will be funded. Two catalyst grants were launched earlier, and one of the recipients is concerned about the temporal gap between the end of the catalyst grants and the start of the other grants. There is nothing that III can do to remedy the situation at this point.

New Investigator Forum

III has held several of these meetings in the past, the most recent in April 2009. They are good for the community, and provide a good opportunity for strengthening infection and immunity research by establishing peer networks of new investigators working in related or overlapping areas of research. These meeting are generally held every 2 years; however it may difficult to organize a meeting for next spring given our obligations for the international review and concept papers. Furthermore, due to the economic downturn, there are fewer new investigators than normal. This issue will be further discussed at the September IAB meeting.

New Business

Development of Novel Antimicrobials

A proposal from Gerald Wright (McMaster University) and Julian Davies (University of British Columbia) regarding antimicrobial resistance was presented by IAB member Eric Brown. This is a very prominent issue at the moment, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, where the goal is to develop 10 new antibiotics by 2020. The collaboration between the Swedish president (acting on behalf of the EU) and the U.S. to address the problem of antibiotic resistance prompted the question: what are we doing in Canada? In the past III ran an initiative called "Novel Alternatives to Antimicrobials," but current Canadian infrastructure that was not available in the past might enable us to participate in the development of these compounds. Pharmaceutical companies by and large ignore this problem, because it is difficult for them to recoup their R&D investments. There is also a potential mindset among the public that they are not willing to pay a lot for antibiotics, even though they have a higher treatment promise than some other, more expensive drugs. As such it remains the focus of academic and biotechnology companies. In order to avoid the disappointments of the past, E. Brown suggested returning to natural product, cell-based screens, or fragment-based drug discovery that is succeeding in other areas. This may be a good time for academia to become involved, because larger universities have robotics and other technology that allow them to perform small molecule screens. Since "investigational" research is largely ignored by open competitions, this might be a good area to focus strategic funds. Also, it may yield projects that are relevant to the mandates of both CIHR and NSERC, and thus prompt a partnership. Potential interest by pharmaceutical companies in this type of research may also help CIHR to promote increased participation by investigators in the industry-partnered competitions (which are historically under-applied to) for this topic. This issue was also a highlight of the NIH roadmap for the 21^st Century, and $100M/year for the past five years was allocated to this research area to support large-scale efforts, but they are focused mainly on infection (organism-specific problems).

Germ-free Facilities

Peter Ernst introduced the McMaster gnotobiotic facility to the board. These facilities are used for understanding the impact of specific colonizing organisms of the GI tract on various other diseases. While the microbiome has been a hot research topic during recent years, there is increasing interest as it is now being associated with other diseases in which there was no historical link. Gnotobiotic facilities can be used to study the mono-association of organisms with host animals (typically mice), or to assess the effect of single (or specific) microbes on the host. The problem is that currently there is only one facility for generating these germ-free animals in Canada, and we need to increase interest in, and awareness of this facility to expand and protect it. He suggested that III launch some kind of RFA to increase the capacity of this facility, or the development of pods to which animals can be shipped for experimentation. Adequate training would be essential in order for this to work, both for staffing the pods and for preventing an interruption of research activities due to personnel turnover. The facility in Hamilton was originally built with CFI money, but we are more interested in keeping it going, as there are large expenses associated with maintaining sterility, screening animals, and deriving new strains of mice. A national core facility of this type could be extremely beneficial, and as research funding is unlikely to increase, we need to get the most out of every dollar. The Canadian Microbiome Initiative provides a good platform from which to support the gnotobiotic facility, as if this initiative produces candidates for research projects within the next few years, these researchers will need a facility that enables them to study the candidates produced by these initial experiments. However it should be emphasized that any initiatives launched must be done in conjunction with McMaster and the people who run the facility. Furthermore, if CIHR is going to support projects that need the facility, we must first ensure that the facility could handle the extra workload, and that it will be available to researchers outside of McMaster. An oversight committee to regulate usage might help to ensure that this happens. If III decides that supporting these facilities would benefit the I&I community, then we might need to appeal to the higher levels of CIHR, or other government branches. What we can do is to make the other institutes aware of this facility, in the event that there are multi-institute projects that could be developed.

Transplant Medicine

Anthony Jevnikar discussed a proposal aimed at increasing our support of the immunological aspect of our mandate, specifically as relating to organ transplants. Canada is a low-donor country relative to other developed nations. This is a serious problem, especially as early organ failure can happen, which leads to patients who require multiple transplants. There are currently more than 35,000 transplant recipients in Canada, and post-transplant deaths are typically due to infection, cancer or cardiovascular failure. He suggests that III should be supporting more research efforts aimed at investigating the role of the innate immune system, as a lot of attention has been paid to the adaptive response. There are very few B-cell biologists interested in transplant biology, and III could potentially focus on the problem of inflammation and use transplants as a model. This initiative would not necessarily require a partnership with other institutes, although other institutes may be interested. Possible topics for RFAs include cardiovascular disease (since inflammation of any organ can lead to cardiovascular problems and transplant patients are constantly inflamed), cancer (many cancers that develop post-transplant are microbial-based), and personalized medicine. The emphasis needs to be put on the immunology of transplants and applied immunology, as this could yield a lot of success stories. If we were to support these programs with discretionary money, we would be addressing both innate and adaptive immunity. If we partnered with another institute, we would get additional mileage out of the initiative, and could touch other pillars by examining why people are not donating organs. We could also tap into the resources of Canadian Blood Services, who has taken over organization/coordination of organ donation in Canada, since they also have large research budgets. Although this idea could be incorporated into the Inflammation concept paper, we do not want it to get buried in a larger initiative if we are investing strategic funds. If we can show that there will be fairly rapid outcomes for an initiative targeting transplantation, it might be a good candidate for our $1.5M strategic fund.

Discussion of Community Proposals

The suggestions presented by board members the previous day were recapped. M. Ouellette likes that so many suggestions came from IAB members and the I&I community. Each of the three new initiatives that were discussed yesterday could possibly fit into one of the concept papers under development. The IAB members that presented the proposals will develop short briefing notes with additional details about potential initiatives for the next IAB meeting in September.

Bhagi Singh Prize for New Investigators

M. Ouellette would like to set up a research award for investigators in the first five years of their independent research career, that receive top marks in the annual open competitions. There are 2 open competitions per year for operating grants, and the recipient could be the highest scoring (by percentile) new investigator (within the first 5 years of their academic appointment) that lists III as their primary institute of affiliation. The award will be presented at an annual Canadian research meeting that is appropriate for the field of research of the recipient. Ideally, once the awardee and appropriate meeting have been decided, either the meeting or III will give a travel award to ensure that the recipient is present. The funds for this award will come from the Institute Community Development budget, and the award will be named after Bhagi Singh, the inaugural Scientific Director of III. There was a consensus among board members that although some investigators might appreciate a salary award, Dr. Singh would probably prefer that the award is for research. This would also be better for III from a PR standpoint. The award will be for $25K, and will be announced in the upcoming III newsletter, pending approval from Bhagi Singh that we name the award after him. This is likely to make a splash at the meetings, and increase the visibility of III.

Network Development Grants

The Network Development Grants program, from the CIHR Knowledge Translation Branch is designed to help to address the gaps between basic and clinical research. These programs are launched as PAs, and the suggested level of support (by the KT branch) is $200K/year for 5 years, not renewable. III is considering supporting 2 of these programs, one for vaccine development and another topic that falls within the III mandate. KT also suggests that 40% of the total project budget must be cash or in-kind contributions from outside sources, although the actual number is negotiable so we can reduce it if we feel it is best (ICR requires a 20% supplement). Contributions from outside partners would not only serve to increase the funding, but also to translate the research into useable results. Currently, the National Microbiology Laboratory is collaborating with several companies to make vaccines, and that the problem faced by the researchers is that they lack the understanding of Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) on a large scale for vaccines. Incorporating that into the network or funding opportunity would be beneficial, or perhaps the network would facilitate those relationships. It is likely that many teams currently being funded under III programs (such as PPSRI) whose funding is running out in 10-11 will certainly apply for this program. The board agreed that the level of matching funds for III projects should be set at 20%, and that the topic areas of the networks should be kept as broad as possible, so as not to exclude any worthy applications.

Future IAB Meetings

The next meeting will be held from September 21-22, 2010 in St. John's Newfoundland. M. Ouellette asked the board how many meetings III needs per year. In the past it had been three per year due to the demands that the HIV/AIDS initiative has. We will continue to have three per year for the first year, and then make a decision with the whole board. Subsequent IAB meetings will be held in Toronto in January and Winnipeg in the spring.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 11:40am.