Neurodegenerative diseases of aging are among the least understood and most undertreated diseases today. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are placing a large and increasing burden on society. If ignored, the social and economic costs of managing these diseases will rise significantly within a generation. Meeting these challenges requires pioneering approaches to accelerating treatments.
The Early Phase Clinical Trials: Canada program was created to provide funding support for clinical trials and clinical trial sub-studies with excellent preliminary data.
*The deadline for submitting applications to the Early Phase Clinical Trials: Canada 2020 program has now passed*
To see the results of the program and grantees awarded, please visit: Nearly $10 million in grants awarded to neuroscience researchers across Canada.
Continuing for 2020
- Applications focused on complementary approaches (e.g., diet, physical activity, sleep, speech therapy, cognitive therapy) are eligible for the Early Phase Clinical Trials program, if they meet our other program scope criteria and have specific supportive evidence/justification (from published literature or unpublished data) to warrant further investigation. Please refer to Institute definitions on complementary approaches for more details.
- The Early Phase Clinical Trials: Canada program runs on a rolling basis. Applicants may submit an LOI at any time and will be notified of whether to prepare a full Proposal within ~2 months of LOI submission.
- See our participant recruiting suggestions for ways of strengthening your recruiting plan in your proposal, and making recruiting faster and easier.
Program Overview
Please refer to the Program Details and Request for Applications (RFA) documents for more information (last updated: January 22, 2020).
Goal: To provide funding to support clinical trials and/or clinical trial sub-studies that could accelerate the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.
Funding: A maximum of $1,500,000 per project over up to 4 years. If you are requesting a budget between $1.5 to $2 million per project, please contact Cristina Tang (cristina.tang@westonbrain.org) prior to applying.
Applicant Eligibility: Principal Applicants must be a researcher working in Canada at least 30% of the time, hold a position at or above the level of Assistant Professor or equivalent, and be affiliated with a Canada Revenue Agency-qualified donee institution located in Canada. Co-applicants and Collaborators must be at the post-doctoral level or above and can be working outside Canada. Applicants may appear in any role on any number of projects.
Project Eligibility: Eligible projects must meet these conditions to be eligible:
- Be a clinical trial(s) and/or a clinical trial sub-study(s) that accelerates the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.
- Projects that require only up to $300,000 over up to 18 months may also be submitted to the Rapid Response program.
- Translational research other than clinical trials and/or clinical trial sub-studies should be submitted to the Transformational Research program or the Rapid Response program.
- Be the development of a therapeutic and/or tool, and/or complementary approaches.
Application Process
The application process consists of two stages:
- Letters of Intent (LOIs)
- Proposals
An application requires the submission of a Letter of Intent which will be reviewed by our scientific review committee. Applicants with high potential projects will then be invited to submit a Proposal. Instructions for submitting the Proposal will be forwarded to those invited.
Applicants can expect to receive the outcome of their LOI application within ~2 months of submission.