The Ottawa Hospital awarded $11.2-million in research funding, well above national average

Researchers at The Ottawa Hospital have been awarded 13 grants worth a total of $11.2-million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

The new projects focus on areas such as cancer immunotherapy, hepatitis C infection, blood clots, artificial intelligence, vision, neurodegeneration, pain control, developmental disabilities, stem cell transplantation and stroke.

“Research allows us to provide the best possible care for our patients, while advancing science and improving health on a global scale,” said Dr. Duncan Stewart, Executive Vice-President of Research at The Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.

The Ottawa Hospital's success rate in this CIHR competition was 21.0 per cent, compared to the national average of 16.8 per cent. The Ottawa Hospital has consistently ranked as one of the top hospitals in the country for highly-competitive CIHR funding, with an overall rank of third in 2018-19.

The following projects are being administered at The Ottawa Hospital:

• Cancer: Dr. Rebecca Auer was awarded $860,626 test strategies to prevent cancer from coming back after surgery, by targeting the immune system.
• Hepatitis C: Dr. Angela Crawley was awarded $895,050 to find ways to help people more fully recover from hepatitis C virus infection. While new drugs can cure the infection, survivors are often left with lasting immune system dysfunction, particularly in the context of severe liver damage.
• Blood clots and statins: Drs. Aurelien Delluc and Marc Rodger were awarded $3,460,341 to lead an international clinical trial to determine if statins can prevent recurrent blood clots in the veins (venous thromboembolism). Co-Investigators: Dean Fergusson, Sudeep Shivakumar, Leslie Skeith, Jean-Philippe Galanaud, James Douketis, Michael Kovacs, Susan Kahn, Clive Kearon, Sam Schulman, Ranjeeta Mallick, Deborah Siegal, Jameel Abdulrehman, Walter Ageno, Jamie Brehaut, Tony Wan, Cynthia Wu, Kednapa Thavorn
• Blood clots and cancer: Drs. Aurelien Delluc and Marc Carrier were awarded $895,050 to conduct a clinical trial to see if PET scanning can help detect cancer in older people with unexplained blood clots. Co-Investigators: Jean-Philippe Galanaud, Alejandro Lazo-Langner, Grégoire Le Gal, Timothy Ramsay, Philippe Robin, Pierre-Yves Salaun, Sudeep Shivakumar, Susan Solymoss, Vicky Tagalakis, Ryan Zarychanski, Lionel Zuckier
• Translational research: Drs. Dean Fergusson and Manoj Lalu were awarded $122,400 to see if researchers are getting better at translating laboratory findings into clinical treatments. Co-Investigators: Jonathan Kimmelman, Alvin Tieu, Lindsey Sikora, David Moher, Brian Hutton, Tania Bubela
• Artificial intelligence: Dr. Brian Hutton was awarded $100,000 to see if artificial intelligence can help researchers efficiently find and evaluate all the studies on a given topic to come up with recommendations for improving health. Co-Investigators: Chantelle Garritty, Adrienne Stevens, Kednapa Thavorn, Danielle Rice, George Wells, Shannon Kelly, David Moher, Laura Weeks, Rachel Rodin,  Brett Thombs
• Blood clots and patient engagement: Dr. Grégoire Le Gal was awarded $263,926 to work with patients, researchers, clinicians and others to come up with a standard list of meaningful outcomes to measure in venous thromboembolism clinical trials. Co-Investigators: Brian Hutton, Alfonso Iorio, Beverley Shea, Lisa Duffett, Tobias Tritschler, Peter Tugwell, Leslie Skeith
• Vision: Dr. Pierre Mattar was awarded $692,326 to study how light-sensing cells in the eye organize their DNA and how problems with this process may contribute to retinal degeneration.
• Brain repair: Dr. Pierre Mattar was awarded $692,326 to investigate how neural stem cells generate the central nervous system (focusing on the retina) and how they might be harnessed to develop new treatments for traumatic and degenerative brain diseases.
• Hip fracture: Drs. Daniel McIsaac, Alan Forster and Carl van Walraven were awarded $183,600 to see if freezing the nerves around a hip fracture can safely and effectively control pain, without the need for opioids. Co- Investigators: Reva Ramlogan, Brad Meulenkamp, Peter Tanuseputro, Faraj Abdallah, Paul Beaulé, Allen Huang, Sylvain Boet, Colin McCartney, Duminda Wijeysundera, Barbara Power, Monica Taljaard, Shannon Fernando, Jeffrey Perry
• Developmental disability: Dr. David Picketts was awarded $765,000 to study a gene that, when mutated, causes a severe form of intellectual disability. He will also investigate a gene therapy approach to reverse the condition.
• Blood transfusion and cancer: Drs. Alan Tinmouth, Dawn Maze and Jason Tay were awarded $1,507,050 to conduct a clinical trial to see if a common drug may be just as good as platelet transfusion for preventing bleeding in blood cancer patients recovering from stem cell transplantation. Co-Investigators: Dean Fergusson, Ranjeeta Mallick, Anca Prica, Christine Chen, Sara Beattie, Irwin Walker, Mohamed Elemary, Matthew Seftel, Kednapa Thavorn, David Allan, Jonathan Mack, Christopher Bredeson
• Stroke recovery: Dr. Jing Wang was awarded $780,300 to optimize cell-based therapies for stroke recovery. Co-Investigator: Marjorie Brand
• Tuberculosis: Drs. Alice Zwerling and Gonzalo Alvarez were awarded $175,951 to model the potential impact and cost-effectiveness of novel community wide screening programs for tuberculosis in Nunavut. This project is administered at the University of Ottawa. Co-Investigators: Jean Allen, Patricia Demaio, Shylah Elliott, Sandy Finn, Michael Patterson, Christopher Pease.
• Blood clots and pregnancy: Drs. Leslie Skeith and Marc Rodger were awarded $455,175 to conduct a pilot trial of aspirin for preventing post-partum blood clots in high-risk women. This project is administered at the University of Calgary. Co-Investigators: Shannon Bates, Wee Shian Chan, Lisa Duffett, Paul Gibson, Susan Kahn, Amy Metcalfe, Stephen Wood

In addition to these projects which will be administered at The Ottawa Hospital, Dr. Dean Fergusson is co-leading a project at McGill University Health Centre on whether the transfusion of fresh blood leads to more hospital-acquired infections in severely ill patients. He is also co-leading a project at Unity Health Toronto examining whether a liberal blood transfusion strategy is better than a restrictive one  for surgery patients under age 65. Dr. Hanns Lochmüller is leading a project at CHEO to identify gene mutations causing neuromuscular disease, and develop and test new therapies for congenital myasthenia and myotonic dystrophy.

Most of the projects listed also make use of Core Resources for research at The Ottawa Hospital, which are supported by donations to The Ottawa Hospital Foundation.