2024-02-13 09:00:00
At a time when HIV cases are experiencing a significant increase in Canada, a Quebec research network on AIDS and other infectious diseases has just learned that the grant it receives from the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé (FQRS) since its foundation in 1994, will not be renewed, which compromises its activities.
The AIDS-Infectious Diseases Network (SIDA-MI) received $800,000 from the FRQS in 2022-2023, which represents a significant and stable portion of its overall funding.
SIDA-MI brings together several dozen researchers working to fight AIDS and several other infectious diseases, such as hepatitis and, more recently, COVID-19. The Network is also in the process of transforming into the Infectious and Emerging Diseases Network.
We have thousands of cells in the bank, plasmas, virus studies over 25 years and now, we have just been cut off from our funding, says its director, Dr Jean-Pierre Routy.
The Network asked the FRQS for funding of one million dollars per year for eight years as part of the FRQS 2024-2032 thematic research network competition. The latter refused SIDA-MI’s grant request, but granted it a non-renewable sum of $100,000 to enable the transition.
The FRQS decision was rendered last Friday. Two days earlier, the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research reported a 24.9% increase in HIV cases between 2021 and 2022 in the country, the highest increase in more than a decade.
A sample base under threat
Dr. Routy has difficulty seeing how the Network can survive without this non-renewed source of funding: he believes that it will have to eliminate two full-time positions. But above all, he is worried about the heart of the Network, the 80,000 blood samples from people with either HIV, viral hepatitis or COVID.
These samples, accumulated over approximately 25 years, are accessible to researchers working in the fight against infectious diseases. They allow us to see the evolution over 20 years, how the virus changes in Quebec, how it is transmitted to certain people.
Dr Routy affirms that the Network allows several actions in the fight against AIDS: the conservation of consent forms for sample donations, for example, or the conservation of pre-COVID samples from carriers of the disease, which are of extraordinary value.
All these tubes are in liquid nitrogen, they cost more than $30,000 a year to maintain and technician time, argues Dr. Routy. This cohort is invaluable, and who will pay to keep it?
He believes that the Network allows us to avoid working in silos. We are not losing everything, there will be other research funds remaining which will not last long, but we are losing all this network, all this wealth. We are going back to the 1990s, he laments.
We are the leaders of all of Canada. We were invited to several countries to present our work and our infrastructure and there, suddenly, we were blocked.
The FRQS did not respond to our interview request Monday afternoon. Radio-Canada was, however, able to consult the evaluation comments of the scientific committee regarding the SIDA-MI grant request. The committee notes that this is a large and ambitious project (…) on emerging and already present viral diseases.
The committee, however, has reservations. It remains difficult to say how the creation of the network fits into existing structures in Quebec and what is its added value to the scientific community. The committee has reservations regarding the overall vision which appears unstructured and not very innovative. The committee also noted the absence of a concrete action plan and a clear common thread between the different aspects of the request.
Very bad news
Doctor Réjean Thomas is the co-founder of the L’Actuel medical clinic, one of the partners of SIDA-MI. He speaks of a disappointment and very bad news when talking about the non-renewal of funding.
There are many projects that have been funded over all these years, which were focused on research, (…) which allow us to have Quebec priorities that resemble what concerns us most here.
He recalls that despite the advances made in recent years in the treatment and prevention of HIV, we still do not have a curative treatment, we still do not have a vaccine, so the research is not over. .
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