Department of Medicine awards two seed grants to support identified research networks
In 2018, the Department of Medicine (DoM) launched a competition to support identified research networks with seed funding. The goal of this grant is to provide support to successful networks, in the hope that they would be able to leverage the grant in pursuit of additional funding while growing their networks. The 2024 competition has now selected recipients for two grants of $100,000 each.
Congratulations to the recipients: Dr. Laura Targownik, Divisional Director of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, for the project The CAIRN-U of T Network and Drs. Robert Wu, Associate Professor of General Internal Medicine, and Andrea Gershon, Professor of Respirology, for the project Health Outpatient Monitoring Evaluation (HOME).
The CAIRN-U of T Network:
Dr. Targownik’s proposal is to establish a Multi-Disciplinary Chronic Autoimmune and Inflammatory Disease Research Network at the University of Toronto – The CAIRN-U of T Network.
Chronic autoimmune inflammatory diseases (CAIDs) occur when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own tissues, causing inflammation and potential organ damage. These diseases are often chronic and incurable, with periods of flare-ups. While the exact causes are unknown, a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental factors are believed to play a role. CAIDs affect approximately 1 in 10 people and are becoming increasingly prevalent. While newer, more targeted therapies are available, they are expensive and don't always provide long-term relief. CAIDs can lead to disability and, in some cases, premature death. The financial burden of these diseases in Canada is substantial and expected to grow.
While U of T researchers have strong, established CAID research programs, they tend to focus on single diseases within specific specialties, with limited cross-disease collaboration. Recognizing the growing importance of interdisciplinary CAID research, there's a need for more coordinated efforts. Therefore, Dr. Targownik will lead a pilot CAID Research Network at U of T to foster collaboration and common goal-setting among researchers, ultimately improving competitiveness and impact in cross-disciplinary research.
The CAIRN-U of T Network aims to boost cross-disciplinary CAID research with four goals:
- Conduct a Detailed Environmental Scan of CAID Research Capacity: A comprehensive review of existing CAID research capacity at U of T, including researcher profiles, grants, trials, patents, collaborations, and available resources (data, biobanks, etc.). This information will be compiled into a searchable database.
- Develop a Coordinated Clinical Data Capture Strategy: Developing standardized data collection methods for CAIDs, focusing on commonalities across diseases, including patient-centered outcomes. This involves a steering committee of researchers, data scientists, IT, privacy experts and patient representatives.
- Organize a Strategic Planning Retreat: A retreat with diverse stakeholders (researchers, patients, industry, donors, etc.) to identify key cross-disciplinary research priorities. Pre-retreat interviews will inform discussions and the retreat will establish working groups to pursue these priorities, each receiving seed funding.
- Create a Regular Recurrent CAID Research Colloquium: A bi-monthly forum for CAIRN members to present ongoing work, fostering awareness and collaboration.
CAIRN leadership will be composed of Dr. Targownik as Scientific Director and disease-specific leads for autoimmune liver disease (Dr. Aliya Gulamhusein at UHN), inflammatory dermatology (Dr. Aaron Drucker at Women’s College Hospital), autoimmune neurology (Dr. Raphael Schneider at Unity Health), inflammatory bowel diseases (Dr. Parul Tandon at UHN), and autoimmune arthritis and connective tissue diseases (Dr. Nigil Haroon at UHN). Dr. Parul Tandon will also serve as database lead. With established funding, the team will also be seeking to expand the network to include active researchers in other CAIDs and other conditions caused or moderated by autoimmunity.
Health Outpatient Monitoring Evaluation (HOME):
The increasing availability of wearables and other remote monitoring devices gives remote clinical monitoring (RCM) the potential to improve health, clinical care and health service delivery for countless medical conditions for patients worldwide. Doing research in RCM, however, is difficult for academic researchers due to many technical, privacy and regulatory hurdles. This leaves RCM development to private companies where there is limited healthcare provider or patient input.
Drs. Wu and Gershon’s vision is to lower barriers to RCM for academic researchers by creating a made-at-U of T RCM research platform. They have proposed Health Outpatient Monitoring Evaluation (HOME), a device-agnostic research platform consisting of a customizable patient-facing app (for passive and active data collection, including disease-specific data and digital biomarkers), a clinician-facing dashboard (for data synthesis, visualization, alerts and AI-assisted event detection) and a research backend (for patient recruitment, data management and analysis). The platform will connect to wearables such as Apple watches, Fitbits and Oura rings to collect health measures such as heart rate, heart rhythm, sleep data and oxygen saturation continuously or intermittently from patients in their homes. The platform will be affordable to researchers, secure, user-centered and flexible, accommodating diverse patients and devices.
Drs. Wu, Gershon and Alex Mariakakis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science, want to partner with their colleagues and patients across departments and divisions to build HOME. Leveraging their 10 years of experience in designing, implementing and using wearables in respiratory research, they would like to use user-centered co-design and implementation science to create a platform that can be used for many diseases and is acceptable, accessible and will be used by diverse patients and healthcare providers. For example, for patients with cancer at risk of toxicity from immunotherapy, for older patients at high risk for falls or for patients after lower limb amputation.
The proposed activities for this project include:
- Establishing a community of researchers, clinicians, patients and stakeholders
- Creating one or more blueprints to expand HOME's capabilities to other disease areas
- Partial financial support for a pilot study in a new disease area
This project aligns with the DoM’s goals to lead, provide better patient care and experiences, and generate new knowledge. Key benefits include creating a new research avenue, fostering cross-campus collaboration, increasing patient involvement and establishing U of T as an RCM centre of excellence. Challenges include technical, data and equity issues, which the project will actively address.
Further funding will be necessary to make the full vision of HOME a reality. The team has already applied to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to support infrastructure costs. The work done through this Network Seed Funding will make U of T researchers more competitive for further RCM funding to make HOME a reality.
If you are interested in joining this group and becoming part of the U of T DoM RCM community, please reach out to Drs. Wu, Gershon or Mariakakis.
