Canadian Government Ending Networks of Centres of Excellence Program

NCE funding is normally renewed every five years, but now, according to an NCE press release, programs up for funding renewal this year can apply for a final, three-year extension. The release also says that programs not up for renewal this year “will continue to be funded until the end date of their grant,” but that “no further opportunities will be available through the NCE Program.”

BioCanRx is in the latter situation. It has received NCE money for four years and so is not up for renewal this year. “We have not heard officially what they are going to do with us,” Bell tells The Globe and Mail. 

Money will instead go to a different program, the New Frontiers in Research Fund, which “will be open to researchers and networks of researchers across all disciplines,” the press release states, especially for “international, interdisciplinary, fast-breaking and higher-risk research.”

The Stem Cell Network, though originally an NCE program, has “standalone funding in recent years,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. Nevertheless, organization officials tell the Ottawa Citizen that it will close at the end of March, barring the emergence of another federal funding source. It is currently petitioning the federal government for funding. 

 “To be internationally competitive at this time and space, you need to have many different scientists working together,” Freda Miller, who says that the Stem Cell Network “made [her] career,” tells The Globe and Mail. Without funding for networks, she says, those collaborations may cease to exist.