Funding, News and Announcements

Multiple Sclerosis Society | Brain Canada | Biogen MS Progression Cohort - Call for Letters of Intent

The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, Brain Canada and Biogen are pleased to announce a new and innovative research initiative to study disease progression in people living with MS in Canada. This multi-stakeholder partnership is a novel opportunity to support MS research with the intent to build a national cohort of MS patients. This funding opportunity has the overall goals of serving as an open access tool to stimulate continued MS research in Canada that will benefit the MS patient, research and clinical communities and serve as a resource and model for the study of other neurological diseases.

The competition will be structured in two parts:

• Planning grant: Teams of investigators will first submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) to seek a planning grant that will enable them to appropriately plan and develop their full application. The planning grant will provide the applicants with resources to establish a team of researchers that, in collaboration, will design the study and conduct a landscape analysis of current resources that could assist with the development of the cohort. The total funding envelope that is available for the planning grant is up to $250,000 (CAD) for 5 months. If more than one team is invited to the full application stage, they will share the planning grant.
• Full grant: The work prepared with the planning grant will lead to the submission of a full application that will demonstrate the capacity of the team(s) to assemble a cohort of people with MS, collect data using a suitable database/infrastructure from the cohort and commence answering specific questions of this study related to progression in MS. Only one team representing multiple centers in Canada will be selected to receive the full grant. The total funding available is $6,590,000 (CAD) for up to 5 years (with the potential of additional funding depending on additional partners).
  

Please visit the MS Society’s MS Progression Cohort page for more information on eligibility, application process, and timelines.

The LOI application deadline is Monday May 8, 2017 at 16:00 EDT.

For any other questions related to this funding opportunity, please contact Dr. Karen Lee at msresearchgrants@mssociety.ca.