Priority 3: Research and Scholarship

• Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our federal, provincial, regional, not-for-profit and industry partners have invested some $90 million to support more than 250 COVID-19 related research projects across campus.
• The National Sanitarium Association invested $1 million to support an interdisciplinary team of researchers at McMaster and SickKids to develop a bioengineered lung model that can respond better to viruses and drug treatments, giving scientists a tool to advance research in lung conditions.
• The Government of Canada, through its COVID-19 Immunity Task Force (CITF), invested $5 million to support Canada’s largest long-term care study designed to determine how well vaccination works in residents of long-term care homes and its impact on their physical, mental, and social health.
• Researchers have developed a McMaster-made inhaled vaccine – built on decades of early research – that can provide broad, long-lasting protection against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern. The vaccine is nearing the end of Phase 1 clinical trials, with Phase 2 to follow.
• The Public Health Agency of Canada invested nearly $3 million in a knowledge mobilization plan to support the needs of Canadian healthcare professionals impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic by creating new prevention and intervention strategies.
• Health Canada granted $1.5 million to McMaster researchers who will develop a formal palliative care program for long-term care homes in Canada that aims to address the major deficiencies of the existing care system witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• A team of researchers at McMaster, Simon Fraser University, and several other universities across the country, have received $2.5 million in funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to establish the Canadian Network for Modelling Infectious Disease (CANMOD), a national network of experts dedicated to increasing the country’s ability to track the spread of pathogens and inform public health decisions.
• A grant from the Public Health Agency of Canada that supports the McMaster Platelet Immunology Lab as Canada’s centre for combatting vaccine-related blood clots which, have been confirmed to cause vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT). 

• McMaster and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) signed a strategic partnership agreement to advance nuclear research and education at both institutions in key areas such as radiopharmaceuticals for cancer detection and treatment, materials research, clean energy, nuclear safety and policy development.
• NSERC and the CANDU Owner’s Group invested nearly $1.5 million in McMaster’s nuclear experts to advance the development and validation of methods for low dose radiation protection.
• McMaster, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation and Global First Power are partnering to advance research in the area of small modular reactors (SMRs) – a clean energy technology that will play an essential role in Canada’s Net Zero by 2050 goal.
• An investment of more than $1 million from NSERC and the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering (UNENE) will generate new experimental data and models needed for existing CANDU reactors as well as the emerging opportunities related to SMRs, addressing safety analysis predictions and uncertainty assessments.
• McMaster and Westinghouse Electric Canada Inc. (WEC) are exploring collaborations in support of WEC’s eVinci SMR development and deployment plan. The partnership will help shape the next generation of highly qualified and trained professionals in SMR research, development and deployment.
• McMaster is one of two global suppliers of I-125, a medical isotope used to treat prostate and other forms of cancer. The McMaster Nuclear Reactor typically produces and ships enough I-125 to provide material for about 70,000 treatments per year. McMaster also develops new medical isotope-based drugs and radiopharmaceuticals.
• McMaster formed a partnership with Promation to bring a new technology for producing lutetium-177 – an increasingly sought-after medical isotope used in cancer therapeutics – to the marketplace. Deployment of McMaster’s lutetium-177 separation technology will enable expansion and diversification of the supply chain for this essential medical isotope.
• The McMaster Intense Positron Beam Facility (MIPBF) is a collaborative project that involves several McMaster researchers, MNR staff members, numerous external research partners and collaborators, as well as funding agencies including the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation. When complete, the MIPBF will be one of only four reactor-based positron production facilities in the world and will give Canadian researchers access to positron diagnostic techniques used to conduct research and laboratory experiments, techniques that were previously available only in Europe.

• CIHR awarded an interdisciplinary team $1 million to investigate whether declines in muscle mass directly contribute to declining physical activity and mobility.
• The Weston Family Foundation awarded $12 million to the McMaster-based Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), for a new initiative that will shed light on factors that influence brain health as we age, including lifestyle and the human microbiome. The study is critical to the future development of screening and prevention strategies that promote brain health for aging Canadians.
• A $2.4-million community-based research project to promote health, independence and mobility among older adults, received support from the Public Health Agency of Canada Healthy Canadians and Communities Fund. The EMBOLDEN program will bring together older adults living in neighbourhoods that are experiencing health inequities for weekly interactive group sessions, which will include physical activity, healthy eating, support with system navigation and an opportunity to socialize.
• A study to determine the factors affecting transitions of older adults from low-income housing to long-term care received more than $1.1 million from CIHR. Researchers will create a tool to assist health system managers identify who is most likely to make the move and provide relevant neighbourhood data.

Top 100 Award, the John Charles Polyani Prize in Economics, the John L. Synge Award in Mathematics and the Alice Wilson Award from the Royal Society of Canada. Five faculty have joined the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences as fellows and three faculty were elected as fellows of the Royal Society of Canada.

• Ontario Health invested more than $5.7 million in the Program on Evidence-Based Care (PEBC), headquartered at McMaster. PEBC produces guidelines and resources in partnership with clinical experts in all major cancer disease sites and across all clinical programs and modalities to drive improvement in the cancer care system.
• The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) granted McMaster researchers $4.6 million to study whether an anticoagulant reduces the risk of stroke and other adverse outcomes in patients who have a heart arrythmia (perioperative atrial fibrillation) after noncardiac surgery. The trial has the potential to inform and improve clinical practice.
• A $7-million clinical study, supported by CIHR, will test whether a potent anti-inflammatory drug reduces the risk of heart failure and ischemic cardiovascular events, to identify new methods of treating heart failure, secondary to ischemic heart disease.
• McMaster researchers received more than $2.7 million from CIHR for a clinical trial investigating whether the use of two different medicines can improve outcomes of patients with heart attacks. The outcome could lead to low-cost therapies for the treatment of heart diseases and save many lives.
• A $1.8-million grant from CIHR is allowing researchers to conduct a randomized trial of partial breast irradiation, building on an earlier study that found a shorter course of higher dose radiation had promising effects for women with early-stage breast cancer who undergo breast conserving surgery.

• The Department of Pediatrics launched its inaugural Collaborative Research Excellence (CoRE) Builder Team Grants competition. Annually, two projects that improve health outcomes are awarded $100,000 each.
• In 2022, several international university ranking systems continued to place McMaster among the top 50 universities globally for health and medicine subjects. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed McMaster University 19th in the world for clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects.
• The QS World University Rankings ranked McMaster 21st in the world for nursing and 37th for medicine, and the U.S. News & World Report of Best Global Universities placed McMaster 37th for clinical medicine. The 2022 Shanghai Global Ranking of Academic Subjects placed McMaster 47th internationally for clinical medicine.
• A $6.7-million investment from CIHR has created POPCORN (Pediatric Outcome Improvement through Coordination of Research Networks) that will help McMaster and 15 other pediatric research sites across Canada join forces to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 and lay the foundation to study other conditions in the future. In partnership with CHU Saint-Justine, in Montreal, the infrastructure will enable a “big picture” approach to tackling child health issues in Canada through multi-centre recruitment of patients and data-sharing.
• McMaster is ranked first in Canada and sixth worldwide for impact on health and well-being in an international ranking of more than 1,400 universities, a testament to McMaster’s established record for advancing better health solutions, care, equity and growth.