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| Volume 11, Number 14 | March 19, 2004 |
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Formation of research groups aidedThe Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) has launched a new matching-funding program to encourage health researchers from a variety of disciplines to form research groups. SHRF and the U of S announced March 10 that the first Research Group Facilitation Grant Program competition has resulted in five grants totalling $500,000 for work on new treatments for diseases such as diabetes, cancer, heart disease, immune disorders, infectious disease, and epilepsy and other brain disorders. The studies will be conducted by 71 U of S researchers and one from the University of Regina. The five newly funded funded research groups are: immunology, neural systems and plasticity, cancer proteomics, molecular design, and cardiovascular. Under the new program, SHRF contributes 40 per cent and the researchers' university contributes 60 per cent – so in this round, $200,000 comes from SHRF and $300,000 from the U of S. Over the years, experts have recommended development of research groups. University Co-ordinator of Health Research Bruce Waygood says SHRF’s funding plan is critical to the development of new health research groups. SHRF head June Bold says, "Our program is intended to bring top researchers together in stimulating group environments where they can more readily share resources and exchange ideas. The outcome should be a stronger health research environment overall. We hope to see more federal research grant money flowing to the province, as a result, and more students excited about working in health and health research in Saskatchewan." Peer Review Committee Chair Tom Wishart says, "We used experts from outside the province to make judgments about the quality of the proposals. We used the standard format for reviewing proposals, and the bar was set fairly high. Though the funded groups differ in terms of their stages of development, the committee considered all of the funded groups to have submitted strong applications." Research supported must be in a field of human health research.
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