Vaccine network surprised by funding cut ======================================== * Laura Eggertson A federal decision not to renew a $34-million grant to the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics (CANVAC) had nothing to do with the quality of its research, says the executive vice-president of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/173/7/741/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/173/7/741/F1) Figure. **Without CANVAC, Canada may lose ground in developing vaccines.** Photo by: Canapress The Network of Centres of Excellence (NCE) decided in June not to renew funding for the network of 75 Canadian research teams that are developing vaccines for cancer, hepatitis C, HIV and emerging viruses such as SARS. The NCE funding is administered by NSERC, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada and Industry Canada. “Even if the research is excellent, a network is more than just that,” says Nigel Lloyd, executive vice-president of NSERC. Network applicants are also judged on their ability to develop highly qualified personnel, establish partnerships, facilitate knowledge and technology transfer and manage the network. Applicants have to satisfy every criteria, says Lloyd. “There has to be a really efficient management of the network and it has to be making a contribution to the potential user community as well as just the scientific community.” Of the 3 research networks that applied for renewals in 2006, the NCE funded only the Canadian Stroke Network. AquaNet, an aquaculture research network based in Newfoundland, also lost funding. The decision to cut CANVAC's funding came as a surprise to many in the vaccine research community, given the 6-year-old network's early successes, which included helping to develop preliminary vaccines against the Ebola and Marburg viruses, identifying key immune factors associated with early stages of SARS and beginning the first Canadian clinical trial for a therapeutic HIV vaccine. “We are losing opportunities to be first on the map, the first to test these vaccines,” says Dr. Michel Klein, CANVAC's executive director. Klein believes the NCE did not think CANVAC was filing enough patents or commercializing discoveries quickly enough to justify the government's investment. “Not supporting vaccinology is a very short-sighted view because prevention is going to be the medicine of the future and clearly vaccines have been one of the greatest successes of medical history,” says Klein. Outcomes, and the length of time that it takes to develop a working vaccine, are part of the assessment, Lloyd acknowledged. “That's obviously a subjective assessment by the selection committee,” he says. All 3 applicants could have been funded if they met the NCE criteria, he added. “But the judgment was that only 1 of them met the extremely high standards that we had set.” The specific area of research involved was not a consideration, Lloyd says. NCE's emphasis on criteria other than research excellence fuels an emerging debate that recently saw 40 prominent scientists accuse the Canadian government of placing too much emphasis on the requirement that researchers obtain co-funding from industry and other sources. In a letter published in *Science* (2005;308:1867), the scientists urged Canadian governments and scientists “not to succumb to the superficial allure of co-funding but rather to evaluate and fully fund research on its own merits.” Arthur Carty, the science adviser to Prime Minister Paul Martin, responded (*Science* 2005;309:874-5) that only 22% of total expenditures from all federal granting bodies required co-funding. But he also pointed out that accountability and fiscal management are important in publicly funded science. “Scientific merit is not necessarily the sole determinant of success,” Carty wrote. Nobel laureate John Polanyi has also entered the debate, accusing Canada of over-managing science. “Excellence is, as all acknowledge, a scarce resource,” Polanyi says. “If one selects science on the basis of other criteria than that of scientific excellence, it can only be by compromising this indispensible criterion. The cost to the nation of doing that is not worth the nebulous gain. Yet we do it.” Ironically, the NCE's decision will likely weaken researchers' ties with industry. CANVAC had negotiated arrangements with several pharmaceutical companies to conduct clinical trials in Canada, but those companies will now go elsewhere, Klein predicted, as may some of the researchers Canada has succeeded in attracting and retaining in this field. “You're going to be left with independent investigators doing their own investigating in their own labs,” says Klein. Sanofi pasteur says some of its agreements to test vaccine concepts developed by CANVAC researchers will be affected. Jim Tartaglia, the company's vice-president of research and development, says it's “too early” to know the complete impact of the funding cut, but the network may not be able to operate its new non-human primate facilities in Montréal and immunological monitoring infrastructure, in which Canada just invested $15.7 million. The decision also raises questions about a national laboratory to monitor and analyze the immune status of patients at various stages of a disease and their immune response to various vaccines. CANVAC was going to administer the laboratory. Klein says he plans to return to Europe when his mandate as CANVAC's executive director expires. “The environment is not right [in Canada] to make vaccines. Clearly someone at the top does not understand what it requires to be competitive in vaccinology.”