Strategic Value: The Trudeau Institute is a key source of jobs and intellectual excellence in Saranac Lake. At its peak, when NIH funding was available for basic research, Trudeau employed 165 people, many Ph. D scientists. When NIH moved its funding to applied (“translational”) research Trudeau suffered a dramatic reduction in funding and staff. A new Director, Atsuo Kuki, is attempting a re-creation of the Institute as a coordinator of applied and basic research for specific diseases using teams spread across the globe.
In 2019 Trudeau sought a leadership commitment from Cloudsplitter Foundation to seed a new Project Team. The plan was to leverage seed funding from Cloudsplitter by gaining over $1.4M in alliance revenue for Trudeau Institute, as they deploy skills to deliver results to their most recent mission-aligned partner, Gates MRI.
The Cloudsplitter Foundation made a $100,000 commitment to Trudeau as two $50,000 matching grants that were dependent on equivalent amounts raised from Trudeau board members. As of November 27, 2019, the number of participants in this Matching Challenge grew from 29 to 32 representing100% participation from Current Trustees and additional contributions from 16 Former Board members.
Since Trudeau Institute’s grant submission was approved in May 2019, Trudeau has funded existing teams in TB to pursue and complete all the necessary preliminary in vivo trials of their new TB testing platform. This platform will be used for revealing comparative assessments of anti-TB combination drug regimens, more precise than hitherto possible, and attractive to partners. They anticipate ramping up to full-scale production in 2020. Additional funds will be allocated to expand the team with a key scientific staff hire in 2020 to lead this laboratory initiative.
- Grant Name: Trudeau 3.0
- Project Size: $480,000
- Grant Amount: $100,000