Joint Canada-Israel Health Research Program

The Joint Canada-Israel Health Research Program (JCIHRP) is a seven-year, CAD35-million partnership between the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Azrieli Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) that draws on the scientific strengths of Canadian and Israeli researchers in the broad field of biomedicine. The program will fund 30 collaborative projects involving researchers from Canada and Israel, as well as collaborators from low- and middle-income countries.

Projects to be funded through this year’s competition (Metabolism in health and disease) will add to the 24 joint projects selected through the first four calls for proposals:

• 1st call (2015) – Neuroscience
• 2nd call (2016) – Immunology
• 3rd call (2017) – Cancer
• 4th call (2018) – Neurobiology
• 5th call (2019) – Metabolism (see the list of funded projects below) 

Selected Metabolism Research Projects

The JCIHRP call for research proposals in the field of metabolism in health and disease was launched In November 2018. The proposals were evaluated by an international committee of 15 experts from 9 countries, chaired by Dr. Alvin C. Powers from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Six world-class teams were selected from among 44 proposals and will receive funding totaling up to CAD7 million over the next three years.

The following list of selected projects is in alphabetical order according to the Canadian Nominated Principal Investigator’s surname.

• Microbiome mediation of intestinal pathogen virulence through dietary aromatic compound metabolism

Researchers: Marie Claire Arrieta Mendez (University of Calgary, Canada), Neta Sal-Man (Universitat Ben Gurion of the Negev, Israel), Luis Caetano Martha Antunes (Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz, Brazil)

• G protein functional selectivity in metabolic disorders

Researchers: Michel Bouvier (Université de Montréal, Canada), Mickey Kosloff (University of Haifa, Israel), Claudio Costa-Neto (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil)

• Transcription factor interplay as a driving force in the hepatic response to fasting and its dysregulation in metabolic disease

Researchers: Carolyn Cummins (University of Toronto, Canada), Ido Goldstein (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel), Luiz Romeiro (University of Brasilia, Brazil)

• Metabolic and chromatin reprogramming of HSC during day-night oscillations and aging

Researchers: John Dick (University of Toronto, Canada), Tsvee Lapidot (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), Regina Markus (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil)

• Immunometabolic roles and therapeutic potential of glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP)

Researchers: Daniel Drucker (Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Canada), Chen Varol (Sourasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel), Jean-Claude Mbanya (Université de Yaoundé, Cameroon), Amelio F. Godoy-Matos (Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil),Bruno Geloneze (UNICAMP, Brazil), Joao Eduardo Salles (Santa Casa Medical School, Brazil), Sergio Zuniga-Guajardo (Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, Mexico), Pablo Aschner (Universidad Javeriana, Colombia), Juan Jose Gagliardino (Universidad Nacional De La Plata, Argentina)

• The role of iron homeostasis in the microbiome mediated modulation of metabolic syndrome

Researchers: Gary Sweeney (York University, Canada), Esther Meyron-Holtz (Technion Faculty of Medicine, Israel), Brian Lee, Nisa Makruasi and Sivaporn Wannaiampikul (Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand)

Learn more about the Israel Science Foundation, the Azrieli Foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.