International partnership to nurture future cardiovascular research leaders in Europe

The International Cardiovascular Research Partnership Awards (ICRPA) scheme¹ is currently supported through a partnership between four leading European funders of research focused on cardiovascular diseases: British Heart Foundation (BHF) in the UK,² Dutch Heart Foundation (DHF) in The Netherlands,³ German Centre for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) in Germany,⁴ and Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation (LDF) in France.⁵ The scheme’s principal aim is to support ambitious, high-quality cardiovascular research projects undertaken as international collaborations between mid-career investigators from the partner countries, with demonstrable potential for future research leadership. Through their support, the funders strive to (i) enable new discoveries towards improving the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of cardiovascular diseases; (ii) establish sustainable collaborations that add significant value to the funded research endeavours; and (iii) nurture the funded investigators towards becoming internationally recognised leaders in their fields of cardiovascular research.

The ICRPA scheme started as a bilateral partnership between BHF and DZHK in 2018, with DHF joining as a funding partner from 2019. In its early rounds, the funding competition was open to independent investigators at all career stages. However, following a strategic review, BHF, DHF and DZHK decided to refocus the scheme on funding collaborative research specifically among mid-career investigators from 2022, in an effort to maximize the impact of their investments. The success of the first two rounds of competition under the refocused scheme, completed in 2022 and 2023, led to LDF electing to become a fourth funding partner, thus allowing mid-career investigators from France to join their contemporaries in the UK, The Netherlands, and Germany in competing for funding in the 2024 round.

Detailed information on the ICRPA scheme and past awards is available online;¹ therefore, rather than replicating such information, I will use this commentary to highlight a few facts and figures from the two rounds completed to date in current form, which perhaps illustrate that the refocused scheme has hit a chord among the targeted researcher populations and is serving to meet a significant unmet need.

Across the two competitions undertaken in 2022 and 2023, the refocused ICRPA scheme has attracted 43 applications engaging 101 mid-career principal investigators (PIs) from 68 different organizations (universities and other research institutions). Breaking those numbers down further, the applications have engaged 39 PIs from 34 organizations in the UK, 37 PIs from 16 organizations in The Netherlands, and 25 PIs from 18 organizations in Germany. The overall success rate has been 18.6%, with funding totalling almost €11 million awarded to support eight collaborative projects, which are addressing a diverse range of important issues in research into cardiovascular diseases (Figure 1A). The breakdown of the funding awarded to date is £3.8 million (ca €4.4 million) from BHF, €3.5 million from DHF, and €3 million from DZHK.

Figure 1

(A) Funded collaborative projects. MegaCardiocyte: Discovering the microvascular landscape from a platelet perspective; PIs from University of Edinburgh (UK), Maastricht University (NL), LMU Munich (DE). PLAK-TALK: Intercellular communication pathways in atherosclerosis and plaque destabilisation; PIs from UMC Groningen (NL), University of Cambridge (UK), TU Munich (DE). Prot4CVD: Translational proteomics for cardiovascular diseases; PIs from University of Cambridge (UK), Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin (DE). PROMETHEUS: Pulmonary hypertension induced right heart failure; PIs from UMC Amsterdam (NL), Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research (DE), University of Sheffield (UK). BI-PATH: Bi-national investigation of placental pathology and maternal cardiovascular health; PIs from University of Bristol (UK), Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (NL). HeartDisc: Understanding the mechano-signalling role of the Z-disc in the pathogenesis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; PIs from Charité—Universitätsmedizin Berlin (DE), University of Birmingham (UK), UMC Amsterdam (NL). Shift-DCM: Decoding oxidative stress mechanisms in dilated cardiomyopathy; PIs from King’s College London (UK), UMC Goettingen (DE), UMC Amsterdam (NL). Treat-ATHERO: Unlocking the full potential of regulatory T cells to combat atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease; PIs from Universiteit Leiden (NL), University of Cambridge (UK). (B) Gender distribution of applicants and awardees; (C) Applicants’ years since highest research degree. All figures are based on consolidated data from the 2022 and 2023 competitions under the refocused ICRPA scheme.

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A particularly noteworthy feature of the scheme’s progress is the gender representation that has been achieved across applicant PIs, which has carried through to successful PIs whose applications have been selected for funding - of whom over 50% are female (Figure 1B). All funders are committed to improving diversity, including gender representation, among the cardiovascular research workforce in their countries - particularly in the senior echelons of the pertinent career trajectory (e.g. see BHF’s ‘Igniting Change’ strategy⁶). In that context, I and my colleagues from the DHF, DZHK, and LDF leaderships are delighted by the direction of travel of the ICRPA scheme, which aims specifically to nurture future leaders in cardiovascular research.

In the ICRPA scheme, a common criterion used by all funders towards the definition of a ‘mid-career’ investigator is the number of years that has elapsed since the award of the individual’s highest research degree (normally a PhD), with 8–15 years set as the baseline requirement.¹ Nevertheless, eligibility of potential applicants is assessed individually by their local funders, taking into account any career interruptions (e.g. for parental breaks, caring/home-schooling commitments, and illness).¹ In that context, perusal of relevant data from the 2022 and 2023 competitions shows that 16 applicant PIs were considered eligible despite >15 years having elapsed since the award of their highest research degree, and 75% of those individuals were female (Figure 1C). Such data suggest that the funders’ transparent readiness to consider individual circumstances may be an important factor in attracting suitably qualified women from the cardiovascular research workforce to apply for funding from the ICRPA scheme.

In closing this commentary, I leave the last word to Professor Garret FitzGerald (Director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, USA), who has chaired the ICRPA International Review Panel, with much efficiency and panache, since the scheme’s inception:

‘International cooperation is key to progress in science, as it is in many other spheres. In its original guise, the ICRPA scheme was already highly successful in enabling cardiovascular research of the highest quality through international collaboration between established European investigators.’

‘I believe the refocused scheme is now delivering even greater value by catalysing fruitful collaborations initiated at the mid-career stage, when even investigators on an upward trajectory can be vulnerable. Such collaborations have a high likelihood for being perpetuated, potentially delivering career-defining development opportunities for the participants and driving research advances for decades to come.’

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the dedicated contributions of many colleagues at the BHF, DHF, DZHK, and most recently LDF to the creation and co-management the ICRPA scheme. In a collegial spirit, the funder teams have learned from each other, shared best practices, and, supported by our outstanding International Review Panel, evolved the scheme at each iteration towards maximizing the added value of our own international collaboration.

References

Author

Biography: Metin Avkiran, PhD, DSc, FAHA, FESC, FISHR, is an associate medical director at the BHF and emeritus professor of molecular cardiology at King’s College London. He has previously served as chairman of the British Society for Cardiovascular Research and president of the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR) and as associate editor of Cardiovascular Research and Journal of Molecular & Cellular Cardiology. Professor Avkiran was deputy head of the Cardiovascular Division at King’s from its inception in 2004 until taking up his BHF role in 2016 and has received the Pfizer Award in Biology (2000), the ISHR Keith Reimer Distinguished Lecture Award (2012), the ISHR Distinguished Leader Award (2022), and the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (Canada) Robert Beamish Leadership Award (2023) for his research and leadership contributions in cardiovascular science.

Author notes