Funding Cycle XXVIII – Letters of Intent Submission in October 2012

The Roche Organ Transplantation Research Foundation (ROTRF) is pleased to announce that 1'698'180 Swiss francs were awarded to ten clinical research projects in 2013*. As in previous years, the projects funded by the ROTRF focus on important issues in transplantation and have the potential for near-term clinical application.

In Cycle XXVIII, Letters of Intent (LOI) for research projects were accepted up until the deadline of 1 October 2012, and the ROTRF received 104 eligible applications. The majority was received from Europe (49%), with the major countries being the UK, Italy, Spain and Switzerland (6.7% each), Germany and the Netherlands (5.8% each), and France (3.8%). LOI’s from North America accounted for 46.1% (USA: 39.4%; Canada: 6.7%) and of the remaining applications, 3.9% were received from Australasia and 1% from South America. No applications were submitted from Asia or Africa. Based on the Scientific Advisory Committee’s review, the Board of Trustees invited 25 applicants to submit a Full Paper Application (FPA) and ten grants were awarded.

The newly awarded investigators will focus their efforts on the identification of non-invasive biomarkers of organ rejection in kidney, paediatric heart, and intestinal transplant patients; on assessing cellular senescence of transplanted grafts; and on the prediction of graft performance before transplantation. Other projects will address the problem of weight gain after transplantation or will aim to identify genetic markers of metabolic syndrome in transplant patients. Finally, the Trustees also awarded grants to support investigations on factors influencing HCV/HIV orthotopic liver transplantation outcome, immunosuppressive mechanisms of betalacept action, and the role of Paneth cells and microbiota alterations in the pathology of intestinal transplantation-related complications.

* At the time of updating this homepage, one grant award was still pending due to administrative reasons and is therefore not listed.