Research funding scheme could change face of paediatric healthcare

A new partnership between Children’s Health Foundation (CHF) and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), as part of its Frontiers for the Future Programme, will see the two organisations joining forces to provide matched funding opportunities for research projects.

Those projects will have the potential to find new cures and treatments for sick children and change the future of paediatric healthcare.

Children’s Health Foundation (formerly CMRF Crumlin and Temple Street Foundation) is the children’s charity supporting sick children in Children’s Health Ireland hospitals and urgent care centres, working to provide world-class facilities, research and care.

The partnership will involve the CHF providing a minimum of €2 million in 2022 for research project funding, matched by SFI.

“Children’s Health Foundation believes in the power of research to improve outcomes for sick children and transform young lives for the better,” says CHF chief executive Denise Fitzgerald.

“This collaboration with SFI is an important step forward to achieve this goal. It will maximise the funding available to the paediatric research community, helping develop new cures and treatments. We are excited to work hand in hand with SFI on this initiative, made possible through the generous donations of our committed supporters, and we look forward to working together over the next year.”

The new collaboration comes under the aegis of the SFI Frontiers for the Future Programme which provides opportunities for independent investigators to conduct highly innovative, collaborative research with the potential to deliver impact, whilst also providing opportunities for high-risk, high-reward research projects.

Importantly, the programme already has the infrastructure in place to assess research proposals and award funding.

‘Outstanding research’

“The Frontiers of the Future programme is fundamentally about supporting outstanding research at all stages and in all areas,” explains SFI director of science for society Dr Ruth Freeman.

“Research is in our DNA and we use international peer review to select outstanding researchers and projects for funding. We have all the structures in place to pick the projects and support the researchers, and it quickly became apparent that other organisations could use them.”

That particularly applies to organisations for which research isn’t a core activity. “They can leverage our expertise and infrastructure and from our point of view, we get extra funding for research from the partner,” she adds. “We have already been working with the Geological Survey of Ireland and the SEAI as partners on high-priority research areas such as land use and climate change. We are thrilled to be working with CHF now.

“They are really passionate about the ability of research to have a positive impact on child health. Paediatric research is a very important area for us as well and SFI is really interested in it.”

Denise Fitzgerald emphasises the importance of research into children’s health. “The partnership with SFI really is very exciting from our perspective,” she says.

“We really want the best care for children. For that we need really good hospitals and doctors and nurses. How do we ensure the standard of care is better in 10 or 20 years’ time? What diseases can we find answers for? That’s where research comes in.

“The partnership will allow us to use SFI’s scale to help us fund more paediatric research. Using the SFI infrastructure that’s already there means that more money goes to research. Partnering with SFI also helps us to improve the quality of the research and that can only help sick children and their families.”

She points to some examples of the research already supported by CHF. “We are funding a study on children born during the first lockdown. They won’t have been exposed to the same environment as children born before then.

Impact of cocooning

“The study is looking at the impact cocooning might have on children in future years. What impact will it have on allergies, for example? Are we born with allergies or is it the environment that brings them out?”

Another piece of ground-breaking research involves a team at the Regenerative Medicine Institute at NUIG, which is taking skin cells from volunteers, transforming them into stem cells and ultimately converting them into beating heart cells.

“This will allow the researchers test different drugs on the cells,” Fitzgerald explains. “And a team in Temple Street is working on the structure of facial bones. The team specialises in cranio-facial problems. Sometimes the bones don’t fuse properly, and this can cause terrible problems later on. This research is helping to address that.”

The latest call for proposals under the Frontiers for the Future programme is now open with a closing date of January 28th.

“We are very excited about the CHF partnership,” Freeman adds. “We all saw the importance of children’s wellbeing during Covid. If we want to invest in something really, really worthwhile, I can think of nowhere better than the health and wellbeing of our children.”

[ sfi.ie/funding/funding-calls/frontiers-for-the-future/ ]