Funding Cycle X – Letter of Intent Submission in April 2003

The Roche Organ Transplantation Research Foundation (ROTRF) is pleased to announce that in the last cycle of the first five-year period, 2.1 million Swiss Francs (CHF) have been distributed to eleven applicants who were awarded a ROTRF grant. The Board of Trustees and the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of the ROTRF were once again pleased with the high quality and originality demonstrated by the applicants.

During the last funding cycle (Cycle X) the ROTRF received 82 Letters of Intent from scientists around the world. Almost half of the applications (45.2%) came from European scientists, where the majority came from UK (17%), Germany (9.8%) and France (3.7%). 42.7% of the Letters of Intent were submitted by scientists in the USA, 7.3% by Canadian and the remainder by Australian and Egyptian scientists.

All the Letters of Intent were reviewed by the ROTRF SAC for relevance to organ transplantation, scientific excellence and originality. Based on the evaluations and comments of the SAC, the Board of Trustees invited 22 applicants to submit a Full Paper Application.

Based on the recommendations of the SAC, who reviewed the Full Paper Applications, the Board of Trustees awarded eleven full or partial grants of up to 300’000 CHF to five applicants from USA, two from Canada, two from Germany and one each from Belgium and Australia.

The abstracts of these newly awarded grants are published in the first pages of this Biannual Report and on the ROTRF homepage. The funded projects focus on improvement of long-term graft survival, the prevention of chronic organ dysfunction, the induction of tolerance and the problem of rejection in xenotransplantation.