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How masterful UHN proposal won team big budget for breast cancer research project.
Posted On: October 21, 2016
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"We can accomplish so much more working together."
By Michael Freeman, ORT Writer & UHN Trainee
Scientists fight hard for grants. They are the modern enablers of scientific inquiry and the lifeblood of academic research, which tends to be rather expensive. Though recent shifts in government leadership have opened up historically stifled funds, the competition for grants has never been more intense. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)—the governmental agency charged with funding health research in Canada—announced 491 winners of its project grant competition this July, divvying out over $375M nationally. Only 13% of nearly 3,800 proposals were approved for funding. For their fall 2016 competition, CIHR reviewers will judge another 3,282 proposals.
Cognizant of the immense competition for funding they face, some academics have become masters in the craft of writing powerful proposals. Dr. Mathieu Lupien is one of these master craftsmen. Lupien is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Associate Professor in UofT’s Department of Medical Biophysics, and explorer of the cancer epigenome. Also, he just received funding for a $2.25M research project.
The Terry Fox Research Institute and CIHR came together to fund Dr. Lupien’s research program through a three-year “New Frontiers Program Project Grant”. This funding will enable Lupien’s eight-investigator team to explore new therapeutic strategies for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) using a radical, multipronged research approach. The team’s central aim is to bring about improved clinical outcomes for women diagnosed with this challenging form of breast cancer through the development of new precision therapies.
The New Frontiers grant application process spanned 11 months, required the submission of a letter of intent in order to be invited to apply, a series of confirmatory site visits, and, of course, a full application, which in this case filled more than 650 pages. How did Lupien stay on track through this gauntlet to develop a cogent and cohesive proposal? “Teamwork was key,” he said. “Our team has an established record of collaborating. This greatly facilitated the exchange of ideas during the writing process.”
This all-star grant team came together to build a program that draws upon four distinct research areas: immunotherapy, tumour metabolism modulation, epigenetics and patient-derived tumour-facilitated treatment discovery. According to Dr. Craig Daniels, project manager and scientific writer for the Hospital for Sick Children’s paediatric neuro-oncology expert Dr. Michael Taylor, this was a very smart idea.
Providing his tips for writing successful grant proposals, Daniels warns against having co-dependent aims that might roadblock a project if, say, step two in a proposed five-step series fails. Similarly, Daniels encourages writers to “recognize the pitfalls in your approach and suggest other possible avenues to success.” This strategy is implicit in the Lupien-headed team’s program architecture, and Lupien was explicit about it in these press release remarks, “There’s not necessarily one research route that will solve [TNBC], so we need to be able to tackle the problem taking multiple different approaches.”
For writing brilliant grants, Lupien sums up his advice as follows: “Surround yourself with passionate scientists…and proactively exchange ideas. We can accomplish so much more working together.”
For more on recently funded immunotherapy research at the UHN, see the October edition of NRx Research Advancements.
Scientists fight hard for grants. They are the modern enablers of scientific inquiry and the lifeblood of academic research, which tends to be rather expensive. Though recent shifts in government leadership have opened up historically stifled funds, the competition for grants has never been more intense. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)—the governmental agency charged with funding health research in Canada—announced 491 winners of its project grant competition this July, divvying out over $375M nationally. Only 13% of nearly 3,800 proposals were approved for funding. For their fall 2016 competition, CIHR reviewers will judge another 3,282 proposals.
Cognizant of the immense competition for funding they face, some academics have become masters in the craft of writing powerful proposals. Dr. Mathieu Lupien is one of these master craftsmen. Lupien is a Senior Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Associate Professor in UofT’s Department of Medical Biophysics, and explorer of the cancer epigenome. Also, he just received funding for a $2.25M research project.
The Terry Fox Research Institute and CIHR came together to fund Dr. Lupien’s research program through a three-year “New Frontiers Program Project Grant”. This funding will enable Lupien’s eight-investigator team to explore new therapeutic strategies for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) using a radical, multipronged research approach. The team’s central aim is to bring about improved clinical outcomes for women diagnosed with this challenging form of breast cancer through the development of new precision therapies.
The New Frontiers grant application process spanned 11 months, required the submission of a letter of intent in order to be invited to apply, a series of confirmatory site visits, and, of course, a full application, which in this case filled more than 650 pages. How did Lupien stay on track through this gauntlet to develop a cogent and cohesive proposal? “Teamwork was key,” he said. “Our team has an established record of collaborating. This greatly facilitated the exchange of ideas during the writing process.”
This all-star grant team came together to build a program that draws upon four distinct research areas: immunotherapy, tumour metabolism modulation, epigenetics and patient-derived tumour-facilitated treatment discovery. According to Dr. Craig Daniels, project manager and scientific writer for the Hospital for Sick Children’s paediatric neuro-oncology expert Dr. Michael Taylor, this was a very smart idea.
Providing his tips for writing successful grant proposals, Daniels warns against having co-dependent aims that might roadblock a project if, say, step two in a proposed five-step series fails. Similarly, Daniels encourages writers to “recognize the pitfalls in your approach and suggest other possible avenues to success.” This strategy is implicit in the Lupien-headed team’s program architecture, and Lupien was explicit about it in these press release remarks, “There’s not necessarily one research route that will solve [TNBC], so we need to be able to tackle the problem taking multiple different approaches.”
For writing brilliant grants, Lupien sums up his advice as follows: “Surround yourself with passionate scientists…and proactively exchange ideas. We can accomplish so much more working together.”
For more on recently funded immunotherapy research at the UHN, see the October edition of NRx Research Advancements.