Grants to USA, Canada, and International nonprofit, government, and academic research institutions and health systems for research addressing Meniere's disease. Funding is intended for both pre-clinical and clinical projects. The purpose of the grant is to adapt and repurpose current treatments, devices, and medications to improve the quality of life for individuals suffering from MD.
This RFP from CWR is seeking both clinical repurposing trials and preclinical repurposing projects to address Meniere’s disease (MD) as well as other vertigo and hearing loss-related diagnoses, such as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), tinnitus, labyrinthitis and vestibular neuritis. CWR is interested in generic or proprietary drugs, devices, nutraceuticals or diagnostics that could be repurposed to create “new” treatments to 1) reduce the symptoms, progression or incidence of; 2) restore function lost to; or 3) to reduce or eliminate severe side effects of currently used therapies for MD and/or other vertigo and hearing loss-related diagnoses, thereby improving patient outcomes and quality of life.
Repurposed therapies can include drugs, devices, nutraceuticals, diagnostics or some combination of therapies. Repurposed therapies must be approved and/or generally recognized as safe for human use by some regulatory agency, such as the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, Health Canada or Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency. Repurposed therapies can be used alone or in combination with other therapies, including the current standard of care.
Preferred submissions include:
- Clinical: CWR's strongest preference is for proof of concept repurposing clinical research trials supported by strong preclinical evidence or clinical observations. They may also consider later stage clinical trials that require additional funding.
- CWR is open to all clinical trial designs (open label, cross-over, dose determination, randomized, blinded, controlled, etc.) that have the opportunity to create a robust and welldefined outcome that will show reproducible clinical impact and/or generate data that can be leveraged into follow-on funding from other sources and additional clinical trials.
- Preclinical: CWR's strongest preference is for late-stage preclinical repurposing research projects that are the last step(s) before moving into patients. They will also consider other types of earlier stage preclinical repurposing research that have a translational focus, including drug screening, bioinformatics, genotyping or ‘omics studies, cell-based assays and animal models.
- Preclinical projects should follow an experimental design and plan that allows for appropriate statistical analyses and reproducibility of the data, resulting in data that can be leveraged into follow-on funding from other sources and additional studies.
- Preclinical LOI submissions would be strengthened by 1) ideas of how positive results may be used in a clinical setting to create patient impact, and/or 2) a supporting letter from a clinical collaborator willing to begin clinical trials once positive results are seen.
For additional information regarding eligible submissions, see: https://www.cureswithinreach.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Menieres-disease-clinical-preclinical-RFP-2022-v3.pdf#page=2
CWR is open to working with other funders who share their desire to address MD and/or other vertigo and hearing loss-related diagnoses and are interested in these near-term repurposing opportunities. They will accept projects that already have funding from another source, when this additional funding from CWR will help improve the chances of success of the project, and therefore increase the chance of patient impact.
