Program Overview
Letter of Intent deadline: April 30, 2024, at 2:00pm EST
The Weston Family Foundation aims to catalyze and scale science-based approaches to significantly improve the health and well-being of Canadians. The Foundation takes a leadership role in tackling large problems that are under-addressed by supporting research that is particularly relevant to the health of Canadians and that empowers Canadians to improve their health and wellbeing.
The Foundation, through its Weston Brain Institute is pleased to announce the re-launch of our flagship Rapid Response program designed to provide seed funding to catalyze novel, high-risk, high-reward translational research that accelerates the development of therapeutics or tools for neurodegenerative diseases of aging.
Program details:
Eligible projects should:
- Be translational research that can accelerate therapeutic or tool development for neurodegenerative diseases of aging (NDAs), as defined by the Institute.
- Therapeutics should address unmet needs in the prevention, treatment and/or symptomatic management of NDAs.
- Tools should address challenges in translational research to accelerate the development and/or clinical implementation of therapeutics for NDAs (e.g., biomarkers, drug delivery systems). Projects covering only the discovery/identification of a tool are considered out of scope.
- Have preliminary data to support the hypothesis and feasibility of the project.
Funding available per project: Up to $300,000 over 18-24 months.
Important dates:
- Program information session: April 2, 2024 at 1pm ET
- Proposal deadline: August 12, 2024
- Letter of Intent deadline: April 30, 2024
- Award announcement: November 2024
For more information about this program, including details on project and applicant eligibility, institute definitions (for translational research, NDAs, therapeutics, tools), program review criteria and expected project outcomes, please see the relevant documents below.
We welcome you to contact us with any program-related inquiries including questions about the eligibility or fit of your project. Please send your questions to Teenu Sanjeevan, Senior Program Manager, at teenu.sanjeevan@westonfoundation.ca
Relevant documents: