FALL 2022 CIHR COMPETITION RESULTS

Researchers at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) will embark on 31 new projects designed to accelerate discoveries of benefit to human health, thanks to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fall 2022 Project Grants Competition. The RI-MUHC teams received over $16.5 million in project funding.

Across Canada, the competition has approved 382 research grants plus one bridge grant for a total investment of approximately $325 million. In addition, 190 priority announcement grants were funded for a total amount of over $22 million and 12 supplemental prizes were awarded for a total of $375K.

The CIHR Project Grant program is designed to capture ideas with the greatest potential to advance health-related fundamental or applied knowledge, health research, health care, health systems, and/or health outcomes.

“We are extremely proud that RI-MUHC grant recipients and their teams have achieved a 24% success rate this year for CIHR project grants, which is higher than the national level,” says Dr. Rhian Touyz, Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer, RI‑MUHC. “With the inclusion of priority announcements and bridge grants, we can celebrate the success of 43% of our submissions. This rate testifies to the deep engagement and excellence of the RI-MUHC research community.”

Congratulations to RI-MUHC grant recipients and their teams!
 

PROJECT GRANTS

• Suhad Ali
  Pharmacological Targeting of Adenosine-to-Inosine (A-to-I) RNA Editing in Aggressive Breast Cancer Subtypes
• Marcel A. Behr
  Differential virulence within the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex
• Nancy E. Braverman, Robert K. Koenekoop, Catherine Argyriou
  Enabling commercialization of retinal gene therapy for Zellweger Spectrum Disorder
• Deborah M. Da Costa, Steven A. Grover, Elham Rahme, Ilka Lowensteyn, Jane McCusker, Nicole L. Letourneau
  Evaluating Acceptability and Feasibility of an Enhanced Digital Intervention for Preventing Postpartum Mental Health Difficulties in Fathers
• Deborah M. Da Costa, Elham Rahme, Mary A. De Vera, Evelyne Vinet, Paul R. Fortin
  Mental Health in Individuals with Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases During the Transition to Parenthood: A Mixed Methods Study to Identify Associated Factors and Support Needs
• Roy W. Dudley, Myriam Srour, Alain Bouthillier, Alexander G. Weil, Frederic Leblond, Paule Lessard Bonaventure, Maxime Richer, Louis Crevier
  Development of intraoperative label-free Raman Spectroscopy techniques to delineate Focal Cortical Dysplasia borders in Epilepsy surgery and detect cells carrying somatic variants
• Alex Gregorieff, Sampath K. Loganathan, Danuta Radzioch
  Defining the role of fetal reprogramming in the gut epithelium in health and disease.
• Marina B. Klein, Lisa Barrett, Brian Conway, Curtis L. Cooper, Pierre Cote, Tammy L. Bourque, John J. Cox, Sahar Z. Saeed, Giada Sebastiani, Michael J. Gill, Shariq Haider, Mark W. Hull, Erica E. Moodie, Valérie Martel-Laferrière, Carrie Martin, Dimitra Panagiotoglou, Neora Pick, Marie-Louise C.Vachon, Sharon L. Walmsley, Alexander C. Wong, James R. Young
  After the Cure: Measuring the full impacts of direct-acting antivirals for people living with HIV/hepatitis C virus coinfection in Canada
• Richard Kremer, Ioannis Ragoussis, Catalin Mihalcioiu
  Co-targeting parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) and osteoclast activation to counter breast cancer metastasis to bone.
• Richard Kremer, Catalin Mihalcioiu
  Anti-parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) monoclonal antibodies against metastatic cancer
• Bertrand Lebouché, Kim Engler, Marie-Pascale A. Pomey,Tibor Schuster, Marina B. Klein,Tarek Hijal, David Lessard, John J. Cox, Alexandra de Pokomandy, Nadine Kronfli, Sergio Vicente, Jean-Pierre Routy, Cecilia T. Costiniuk
  Implementation of a patient portal and tailored patient-reported outcome measures to improve health problem detection and retention in HIV care: The DRHIVe Study
• Jean-Jacques Lebrun, Suhad Ali, Bertrand J. Jean-Claude
  Exploiting a novel dual-specificity cell cycle inhibitor, KP108 as a therapeutic approach for metastatic breast cancer
• James G. Martin, Maziar Divangahi
  Determinants of susceptibility to influenza infection in pregnant mice Understanding the Mechanistic Basis of Irritant (Chlorine)-Induced Asthma
• Sushmita Pamidi, Deborah M. Da Costa, Kaberi Dasgupta, Styliani (Stella) Daskalopoulou, Genevieve D. Eastabrook, Nelly Huynh, Richard J. Kimoff, Marie Letourneau, Barbra De Vrijer, Anne-Maude Morency
  Understanding Barriers and Facilitators to the Treatment of Sleep-Disordered Breathing in Pregnancy and Postpartum
• Yong Rao
  Transsynaptic control of axonal transport in presynaptic assembly and function
• Erwin A Schurr
  Epigenetic factors affecting the anti-mycobacterial immune response of people living with HIV
• Benjamin M. Smith, Mohsen Sadatsafavi, Miranda A.Kirby, Andrea Benedetti, Kate M. Johnson, Nicole Ezer
  Improving Canadian Lung Cancer Screening Efficiency with a Computed Tomography Risk Classifier
• Myriam Srour, Ioannis Ragoussis
  Understanding the genetic architecture and pathophysiology of focal cortical dysplasias using single nucleus RNA sequencing

PRIORITY ANNOUNCEMENTS

Human Development Child and Youth Health - Mid Career Support

• Geneviève Bernard, David A. Rudko, Guangping Gao
  RNA polymerase III-related leukodystrophy: Understanding disease pathogenesis and developing novel therapeutic approaches using murine models

Institute of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis: IMHA Mandate Areas

• Isabelle Gagnon, Laurie Plotnick, Thierry Pauyo, Ilana Greenstone, Debbie Friedman, Melissa Turner, Ramanakumar Agnihotram, Luc J. Hébert
  Direct access physiotherapy in the Pediatric Emergency Department to improve access to quality care for children and adolescents with musculoskeletal injuries: a randomized control trial

Pediatric Cancer Research

• Livia Garzia, Nada Jabado
  Epigenetic mechanisms of osteosarcoma pathogenesis and progression.

HIV/AIDS and STBBI

• Nadine Kronfli, Frederick L. Altice, Mark Stoove, Andrew Lloyd, Lise Lafferty, Behzad Hajarizadeh, Asim Masood
  Enhancing uptake of needle and syringe programs in Canadian federal prisons
• Nitika Pant Pai, Jorge Luis Martinez, Réjean Thomas, Sahir Bhatnagar
  iSampleSmart!, an innovative, App-facilitated self-sampling screen and treat strategy for common bacterial STIs (Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae) for Canadian key populations

Epigenetics/epigenomics in human health or disease

• Shafaat A. Rabbani, Moshe Szyf
  Targeting methyl-CpG-binding domain protein 2 (Mbd2) towards the development of next generation precision Epi-therapies against metastatic breast cancer

Infection and immunology

• Michael B. Reed, Jesse Shapiro, Nicolas R. Moitessier
  A Genome-Wide Approach for Restoring Antibiotic Susceptibility to Drug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Patient-Oriented Research: Early-Career Investigator

• Julio F Fiore Jr, Stephanie M. Wong, Ipshita Prakash, Liane S. Feldman, Justin Rivard, May Lynn Quan, Sarkis H. Meterissian, Emily G. McDonald, Christine Desbiens, Jad Abou Khalil, Lisa Findlay-Shirras, Allison MacIver, Lawrence Lee, Sahir Bhatnagar, Ramanakumar Agnihotram, Marie-Pascale A. Pomey, Janius Tsang, Elaheh Khorasani
  Comparative effectiveness of opioid versus opioid-free post-discharge analgesia after outpatient breast surgery: A randomized controlled trial
• Shaifali Sandal, Peter Nugus, Marie-Chantal Fortin, Ann Bugeja, Ekaterina Loban, Justin Gill, Antonia Maioni, Rahul Mainra
  System-level approaches to increasing living donor kidney transplantation

BRIDGE GRANTS

• Moshe Ben-Shoshan, Jennifer L. Protudjer, Kate M. Johnson, Julia Upton, Ran D. Goldman
  PLEDGE: Policies Laws and Emergency Department Guidelines for Epinephrine auto-injector use
• Moshe Ben-Shoshan, Julia Upton, Derek K. Chu
  SORT: Safety of OIT in a Randomized Trial
• Christian E. Rocheleau
  Regulation of C. elegans EGFR trafficking and signaling by Rab and Arf GTPases
• Deborah Assayag, Christopher J. Ryerson, Andrea Benedetti, Julie Morisset
  Sex and gender based disparities in the treatment of patients with interstitial lung diseases

Learn more on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) website

—Published February 20, 2023