Operating Grant : SARS-CoV-2 variants supplement: COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity
Well-being, Health and Biomedical Discovery
Deadlines
Academic Unit: Inquire with your unit
Memorial Deadline: Tuesday 16th, February 2021
External Deadline: Tuesday 23rd, February 2021
Description
This funding opportunity is part of the Government of Canada’s continued rapid response to address the health challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding will enable rapid and timely research responsive to the current phase of COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and internationally and is focused on research related to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.
Background
On December 14, 2020, authorities of the United Kingdom reported a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern (VOC) to the World Health Organization (WHO), now referred to as the SARS-CoV-2 strain B.1.1.71. Preliminary epidemiologic, modelling, phylogenetic and clinical findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 B.1.1.7 has increased transmissibility, with some reports demonstrating it has a 50-70% higher transmission rate2,3,4. Shortly after the reports from the United Kingdom, national authorities in South Africa announced the detection of a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2, which is rapidly spreading in South Africa5. In early January 2021, two new strains of SARS-CoV-2 were reported from Brazil6,7,8. Many of these new variants are showing mutations that are common between two or more strains. While studies are still ongoing to examine if these new strains are associated with increased disease severity, most of these strains have been shown to have higher transmissibility. There is also emerging evidence that some of these new variants have the ability to decrease the effectiveness of natural and vaccine-induced immune responses9,10. Both the strains in Brazil and the B.1.1.7 strain have been associated with re-infections indicating that they are capable of immune escape from immune responses generated by natural infection11,12,13. These new strains of SARS-CoV-2 have either spread or arisen de novo in many countries across the world, including Canada, and have now been associated with outbreaks.
Given these observations, the increasing presence of known SARS-CoV-2 variants in Canada, and the need to monitor the emergence of new variants, CIHR is mobilizing three separate but linked initiatives (with an investment of up to $25M total) designed to contribute to the national and global efforts to address SARS-CoV-2 variants. These investments are designed to deepen the evidence-base and enable the coordinated assessment, in near real-time, of the immune response to emerging variants and their clinical, health system and public health consequences. In addition, this research will explore any potential immune escape from existing vaccines and thus will serve to provide decision makers with rapid guidance regarding therapies, vaccine effectiveness, and other health system and public health strategies. These efforts are focused on rapidly scaling up research already being performed on emergent variants and to build a national network, Moreover, this network will work synergistically and seamlessly with the developing Variants of Concern Surveillance Network (VOCN) composed of the National Microbiology Laboratory, the provincial public health laboratories and networks and the Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN). The VOCN will focus on epidemiological and genomic sequencing surveillance to complete the whole spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 variant research (see schematic representation of inter-relationships between these groups).
In this first of three initiatives as delineated in the preannouncement, CIHR will provide two streams of supplementary funding to Nominated Principal Applicants (NPAs) who were funded through any of CIHR’s previous rapid COVID-19 competitions, and who are currently researching SARS-CoV-2 variants or have the ability to rapidly incorporate the study of variants into their existing COVID-19 research. This funding is being provided with the goal of accelerating a broad range of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant research and to support the formation of networks that contribute to the rapid response and understanding of variants.
Additional information can be found at ResearchNet.