€2 Million to frontier research projects
TRIDEO - TRansforming IDEas in Oncology Research award – is the name of the new call for ideas and projects having the potential to transform cancer research and of the award rewarding the winners. An evocative name given to a call that solicits innovative research projects pushing the frontiers of knowledge, taking high risks to attain high gains for diseases that are still not much curable. A bet on science progress.
For the first time Fondazione Cariplo and the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) are launching a joint call for frontier research projects in oncology. A single call in two steps. Step 1 will start this month and be open only to research teams in Lombardy and the provinces of Novara and Verbania. Step 2 will kick-in in 2015 and be open to investigators in the rest of Italy. The Foundation and AIRC will provide €1 million each, for a total of two million euros to support frontier research ideas and projects that are so cutting edge and high-risk that do not easily attract funders willing to bet on them.
In Italy alone, one thousand people are newly diagnosed with cancer every day. One thousand today, one thousand tomorrow, one thousand the day after tomorrow, and so on. Thanks to the progress made by research, many types of cancers are now curable, yet, sadly, some are not. There are over 100 different types of cancer, posing perhaps the hardest challenge medicine ever faced. Many battles have been won, but the war is still ongoing.The innovative approaches of the frontier research projects that will be selected under the call and supported by Fondazione Cariplo and AIRC may lead to the identification of new molecular targets and open up new avenues for cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Abroad, institutes like the UK Cancer Research and the US National Cancer Institute have been funding this type of research for the past few years, while in Italy there was no such opportunity until now.
With this initiative Fondazione Cariplo and AIRC aim at nurturing a social context that facilitates original innovative research and encourages investigators to engage in high-risk research, and, ultimately, satisfy needs that are still unmet in cancer biomedicine. They also aim at supporting investigators under 40 years of age who published at least one article as first author or corresponding author in a peer-reviewed journal. When reviewing and selecting research projects preference will be given to projects that are highly original, have a high innovation potential and feature a sound scientific approach.
To fund the greatest possible number of projects, Fondazione Cariplo and AIRC will award each selected project up to €100,000 for research costs and consultants/contractors costs.
“Fondazione Cariplo supports frontier research as part of its mission as an entity that anticipates needs and raises awareness under a subsidiarity approach. Our foundation has decided to partner up with a major organization like AIRC to satisfy needs that are still unmet in cancer biomedicine as well as test the alliance of our two well-reputed organizations in an innovative high-risk program. We bet on bold, daring ideas that others would not support due to the high risk of failure. Fondazione Cariplo trusts AIRC, its unique expertise, and believes in young investigators and their ideas to defeat most terrible diseases such as cancer” said Giuseppe Guzzetti, Fondazione Cariplo President.
“The support of banking foundations to research and science progress has become more and more significant over the years. Now, we are having this innovative call. Cancer is a significant public health issue, every day there are 1,000 people newly diagnosed with cancer in Italy. Over the past decades survival rates have more than doubled, but for those rates to continue to improve we need to continue investing in the brightest minds of our country through alliances like the one with Fondazione Cariplo” said Piero Sierra, President of AIRC
For almost 50 years Associazione Italiana per la Ricerca sul Cancro (AIRC) has been committed to making cancer more and more curable. To that end, AIRC supports innovative research through ongoing transparent fundraising efforts, and promotes cancer education and prevention in families, schools and public venues.
Visit us at www.airc.it