Clinical & Translational Research Programs

In February 2018, the Faculty of Medicine launched a new Translational Research Grant (TRG) Program. The goal of the TRG program is to promote translational research and collaboration between basic science and clinical researchers throughout the Faculty. Given our tremendous strengths in clinical and basic research, this program will promote the strategic integration of research teams from clinical and basic science departments. This program is designed to provide seed funding to test new, innovative ideas and facilitate future grant support.

The TRG process invites applications from 2 (or more) researchers, each as co-principle investigators. One researcher must be a basic scientist holding an appointment in a basic science department or research institute, and the other a clinical researcher, holding a primary appointment in a clinical department. Both researchers must hold their primary appointments in the Faculty of Medicine.

Each application can request up to $50,000 to be used over 2 years. TRG funds are derived from two sources: (1) basic science department or research institute (up to $25,000) + (2) clinical department (up to $25,000). Researchers interested in applying to the TRG Program must confirm that matching funds are available from their host institute, clinical or basic science department before beginning the application process. TRG funding is awarded on a competitive basis following a rigorous peer-review process based on excellence of the proposal, innovative nature of the proposal, previous accomplishments of the applicants, feasibility, potential impact on health and/or patient care, and availability of partner matching funds.

Currently, the Faculty of Medicine is not accepting applications for this program. Please continue to visit this website for updates on future rounds of the TRG program.

In April 2010, the Faculty of Medicine (FoM) launched a new clinical research program named the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chairs Program. This program was received with great enthusiasm and has been very successful in providing support to some of our best clinician-scientists across the Faculty with an ultimate goal of improving health and/or patient care.

The Clinical Research Chairs Program highlights a wide range of departments and medical specializations. Chair recipients are a representation of the Faculty’s Strategic Plan, Leading Innovation for a Healthier World, as well as our commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), a top priority for the Faculty of Medicine. The Clinical Research Chairs Program has allowed the University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine to foster some of our top-performing clinician-scientists across the Faculty.

Clinical Research Chairs funding is awarded on a competitive basis following a rigorous peer-review process. Chairs are funded on a ratio basis with the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine contributing 30%, and the respective clinical department 70%, of the total for each Chair. Applicants must provide confirmation of matching support from Departmental Chairs in order to apply.

This Program funds various levels of Chairs, separated into two streams: Clinical Research Chairs and Junior Clinical Research Chairs.

*Clinical Research Chairs:

• Distinguished Clinical Research Chair: Full Professor demonstrating sustained outstanding research performance; $200,000/year, maximum 5 year term.
• Tier 1 Clinical Research Chair: Associate or Full Professor demonstrating sustained excellence in research; $200,000/year, 5 year term, renewable once.
• Tier 2 Clinical Research Chair: Assistant or Associate Professor showing strong potential to develop as a future leader in their research field; $100,000/year, 5 year term, renewable once.

*Junior Clinical Research Chairs:

• Junior Clinical Research Chair: Assistant Professor within their first 5 years of Faculty appointment, $80,000/year, 3 year term, renewable once.

Currently, the Faculty of Medicine is not accepting applications for this program. Please continue to visit this website for updates on future rounds of the program.

The Blueprint Translational Research Group, established in 2016 at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, developed an innovative research model called the Excelerator program to enhance and enable efficient clinical translation through rigorous methods and approaches. In 2019, Blueprint partnered with the Faculty of Medicine at uOttawa to extend the Excelerator program to the broader Faculty and affiliated institutes to help rapidly develop promising therapies from bench to early-phase trials.

The Excelerator program allows research teams to address many common challenges in translational research a priori with a set of focused studies, and therefore helps researchers and clinical investigators deliver optimized clinical trial protocols with the best possible chance of success.

The Excelerator targets several issues that contribute to failed translation during early phase clinical trial protocol development. The Excelerator program includes:

• Systematic reviews: to objectively appraise available preclinical and early phase clinical data. This helps assess safety, efficacy, and identify knowledge gaps. These reviews have been well received by regulatory agencies (i.e. Health Canada) that are highly concerned about safety when initiating ‘first-in-human’ and early phase clinical trials.
• Implementation diagnostics: to identify barriers and facilitators to patient and clinician participation in clinical trials. By using interview and survey studies we can optimize eligibility criteria, specifics of interventions, and outcomes to be assessed. This can help avoid issues with patient recruitment. In addition, we propose to build patient partnershipusing an integrated knowledge translation approach, to help ensure that the developed clinical trial protocol would align with patient interests and needs.
• Economic evaluation: to estimate the maximum cost at which new therapies can be brought to market and still be considered cost-effective. This can help avoiding delays in commercialization and reimbursement processes necessary for clinical adoption.
• Testing feasibility: by using planned eligibility criteria, we perform retrospective cohort studies from available databases (e.g. The Ottawa Hospital Datawarehouse) to ensure that inclusion/exclusion criteria are feasible, and a sufficient number of eligible patients could be recruited.
• Regulatory consultation: we provide consultation for developing clinical trial protocols as well as regulatory requirements, GMP, GLP 

The Excelerator group is now actively looking for research that might be ready, or soon-to-be ready, to take those early steps along the translation pipeline. With the help of the group’s expertise, researchers at uOttawa and The Ottawa Hospital can tackle all the right questions in advance and launch their projects with the best clinical protocol possible. 

For more information about the program, contact the Research Office at resmed@uottawa.ca or Mohamad Sobh at msobh@ohri.ca.