About the Program

Who We Are

The Bayer Group is a global enterprise with core competencies in the fields of health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer HealthCare, a subgroup of Bayer AG, with annual sales of EUR 16,913 million (2010), is one of the world’s leading, innovative companies in the health care and medical products industry and is based in Leverkusen, Germany. The company combines the global activities of the Animal Health, Consumer Care, Medical Care and Pharmaceuticals divisions. Bayer HealthCare’s aim is to discover and manufacture products that will improve human and animal health worldwide. Bayer HealthCare has a global workforce of 53,400 employees and is represented in more than 100 countries.

Bayer envisions the Hemophilia Awards Program as a step toward making the dream of hemophilia cures and improved treatments a reality.

The Bayer Hemophilia Awards Program demonstrates our commitment to the global bleeding disorders community and to advancing the state of the art of hemophilia care.

Research Priorities

Currently, the Program’s Research Priorities are focused on hemophilia. The program’s research priorities for the 2015/2016 cycle are as follows:

• Patient-related, e.g. comorbidities, inhibitors, joint disease
• Treatment-related, e.g. new products, regimens, gene therapy
• Mechanistic, e.g. molecular mechanisms, experimental models
• Outcomes research, e.g. patient-reported outcomes, quality of life

Previous Research

In previous award cycles the Program has provided funding to support several projects in the following areas:

• Aspects of the molecular biology of vWF structure and function and the diagnosis and treatment of vWD
• The function and regulation of platelets and the diagnosis of platelet disorders.

As a result, the Program will not award projects in these areas during this award cycle.

Excluded Research Topics

In order to maintain a focus on hemophilia and bleeding disorders, the Program will not support research focused on:

• Products or technologies licensed or patented by competitors of Bayer
• Cancer diagnosis or therapy
• AIDS diagnosis or hepatitis therapy except where specifically related to patients with hemophilia and HIV, HCV or HBV
• Cardiovascular disease diagnosis or therapy
• Purely thrombotic disorders.

Application Process

Letters of Intent and Full Applications are reviewed by the Grants Review and Awards Committee which comprises 14 members, representing many of the leading experts from clinical and academic medicine:

• Alok Srivastava MD, Vellore, India (chairman)
• Valder Arruda MD, Philadelphia, USA
• Marijke van den Berg MD, Utrecht, Netherlands
• Kate Khair PhD, London, UK
• Craig Kessler MD, Washington DC, USA
• Riitta Lassila MD, Helsinki, Finland
• David Lillicrap MD, Kingston, Canada
• Pier Mannucci MD, Milan, Italy
• Amit Nathwani MD, London, UK
• Michael Nichol PhD, Los Angeles, CA, USA
• Johannes Oldenburg MD, Bonn, Germany
• Maria Santaella, MSN, Miami, FL, USA
• Midori Shima MD, Nara, Japan
• Gil White MD, Milwaukee, WI, USA

All members of the Grants Review and Awards Committee will review the Letters of Intent and determine which candidates will be invited to submit full applications. Full applications will be reviewed by at least two members of the committee.

Reviewers will evaluate full applications according to the criteria outlined in the Awards section of this website. The reviewers will provide written comments and preliminary numeric scores according to these criteria.

The Committee will meet to discuss individual proposals including strengths, weaknesses and scoring. In this meeting, a consensus score for each grant application will be agreed upon. Proposals will then be ranked according to these scores in order to determine funding. In the event of identical scoring, the Committee will discuss the proposals in question and revise the scoring in order to clearly define a ranked priority. Funding will occur on a regional basis.

Three regions are defined as:

1. United States and Canada
2. Europe (for the purposes of this award, the Europe region includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom)
3. Japan, China, India, Australia and all other countries.

Awards will be determined on the final priority score as agreed by the Grants Review and Awards Committee. In the event that inadequate numbers of acceptable applications are received from a particular region, additional acceptable proposals will be funded solely on the basis of priority scores, without regard to region.

The Committee’s decision is final and there is no appeal mechanism. Applicants who have constructive suggestions about the review of their applications, or the process in general, are encouraged to contact us. See Contact.

Conflict of Interest

The Program has ‘conflict of interest’ guidelines that ensure reviews are conducted in a fair and equitable manner. Reviewers will not participate in the review or priority scoring of applications in which they, or institutions with which they are affiliated, have an interest. Also, to the extent practicable, reviewers will not participate in the review of proposals competing for funding with proposals for individuals associated with their institutions.

Confidentiality

The members of the Grants Review and Awards Committee are bound by the confidentiality rules generally applicable to such bodies.

Award Recipients: 2017

Fellowship Project Awardees
	Dr Bhavya Doshi Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA Role of anti-BLyS directed therapy in inhibitor eradication
	Dr Rosa Toenges University Hospital Frankfurt, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany Exploring template-free CRISPR/Cas9 genomic editing for hemophilia A treatment
Early Career Investigator Awardees
	Dr Dario Balestra University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy F8 splicing-switching molecules for tailored hemophilia A therapies
	Dr Manjunath Goolyam Basavaraj Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA Novel strategies to enhance Factor X activation through improved Factor VIIIa cofactor activity and stability
	Dr Adrienne Lee University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada The role of factor VIII and joint arthropathy in bone density, microarchitecture and bone strength in adolescent severe hemophilia A
	Dr Giulia Pavani French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Paris, France Targeted integration of FVIII in the globin locus for ex vivo gene therapy of hemophilia A
	Dr Heike Singer Institute of Experimental Haematology and Transfusion Medicine, University Clinic Bonn, Bonn, Germany Intracellular identification of FVIII from HA-patients with nonsense mutations in relation to their MHC-driven risk for inhibitor formation
Special Project Awardees
	Dr Paris Margaritis Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA The effects of the EPCR–factor VII/VIIa interaction in normal and hemophilic conditions
	Dr Roger Preston Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland Engineered thrombomodulin variants as novel pro-haemostatic agents for haemophilia therapy
	Professor Cheng Hock Toh University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK Histone-enhanced prothrombin activation: Unravelling the mechanism for new therapies in hemophilia
	Dr Ai-Hong Zhang Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD, USA BAR regulatory T cell therapy for anti-FVIII inhibitor development
Caregiver Awardees
	Ms. Sulochana Badagabettu Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal, India Explore the bio-psychosocial status (physical symptoms, self-reported anxiety, stress and social support), coping strategies and lived experiences among women carrier for haemophilia: A mixed method approach
	Ms. Cilla Joseph Hemophilia Treatment Center, District Hospital, Aluva, India Effectiveness of hydrotherapy along with Ai Chi techniques for arthritic knee joint in hemophilia patients
	Ms. Erin McCabe Governors of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada The assessment of therapeutic relationships in hemophilia care
Outcomes Research Awardees
	Dr Maria Elisa Mancuso Angelo Bianchi Bonomi Hemophilia and Thrombosis Center, Milan, Italy A prospective registry target on critical outcomes in older patients with severe/moderate hemophilia
	Dr Noémie Resseguier Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Marseille, Marseille, France Quality of life and adjustment among siblings of children and adolescents with severe hemophilia

Past Award Recipients

• 2016 Awardees
• 2015 Awardees
• 2014 Awardees
• 2013 Awardees
• 2012 Awardees
• 2011 Awardees
• 2010 Awardees
• 2009 Awardees
• 2008 Awardees
• 2007 Awardees
• 2006 Awardees
• 2005 Awardees
• 2004 Awardees
• 2003 Awardees