Neurodegenerative diseases of aging are among the least understood and most undertreated diseases today. If ignored, the social and economic costs of managing these diseases will continue to rise. Meeting these challenges requires pioneering approaches to accelerating treatments.

The Transformational Research: Canada program funds transformative, novel, high-risk, high-reward translational research projects. Projects can be from $300,000 to $1,500,000.

*The deadline for submitting applications to the Transformational Research: 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

• For the Transformational Research: Canada 2019 program, no preliminary data is required; instead it can be collected as an initial milestone with well defined, quantifiable go/no-go criteria. The structure of the project and budget should match the quality of the preliminary data.
• Expanding the type of complementary approaches eligible for funding to other lifestyle interventions including but not limited to: speech therapy, cognitive therapy, music therapy, social interaction, if these applications meet our other scope criteria and have specific supportive evidence/justification (from published literature or unpublished data) to warrant further investigation.
• Encouraging applications that bring in other fields such as: AI, big data, machine learning, data science, and computer science.

Program Overview

Goal: To provide funding for translational research that will accelerate the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.

Funding:  A maximum of $1,500,000 over up to 3 years per project. Encouraging applications at all funding levels from $300,000 to $1,500,000, without need for preliminary data.

Applicant Eligibility: Eligible Principal Applicants must be researchers working in Canada at least 30% of the time 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/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: Projects must meet the following conditions to be eligible:

• Be translational research (excluding clinical trials and clinical trial sub-studies) that accelerates the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.
  • Clinical trials and clinical trial sub-studies should be submitted to the Early-Phase Clinical Trials or Rapid Response programs; however other translational research using humans or human samples/data is in scope.
• Be the development of a therapeutic and/or tool and/or select complementary approaches (Please refer to the Program Details for more information on complementary approaches that are in scope.

The project structure (i.e. the frequency and detail of the go/no go milestones) and the quality of the preliminary data should commensurate with the size of budget. For example: A project requesting $1,500,000 for 3 years should have strong preliminary data and multiple go/no-go milestones, whereas a project requesting $300,000 could have minimal preliminary data and less frequent milestones.

Please refer to What We Fund for Institute definitions of neurodegenerative diseases of aging, translational research, therapeutic/tool, and complementary approaches.

Application Process

The application process consists of two stages:

1. Letters of Intent (LOIs)
2. 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 sent to those invited.

Program Documents

Program Details

Program Information Webinar

The Institute will hold a Program Information Webinar for each disease focus, to provide further details on the program and answer any questions. However, if you have questions specific to your project (e.g., project scope), we encourage you to contact us.

Alzheimer’s & Related Diseases: February 24, 2020 at 1:00pm ET
The webinar has passed.

Parkinson’s & Related Diseases: March 20, 2020 at 1:00pm ET
The webinar has passed.