McMaster University

McMaster University is a Canadian public research university located in Hamilton, Ontario. It has received millions of dollars in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and has participated in several key aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic including vaccine development and studies on repurposed drugs.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded McMaster through several grants relevant to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2015-2021:

• $100,000.00 USD awarded to multiple projects to “fund studies that will facilitate research collaboration among researchers to address major COVID-19 research questions and reduce the harm of the current COVID-19 pandemic, while fostering global, multi-disciplinary collaborations.”⁴⁾ Research areas include:
  • Natural disease history, epidemiology and transmission
  • Vaccines and prophylaxis
  • Infection, prevention and control
  • Therapeutics
  • Clinical management

• $12,392,744.00 awarded “to identify and address ethical challenges, ethics-related risk, and policy gaps that have the potential to undermine the impact of potential life-saving technologies and interventions in global health and development research” from November 2019 until January 2028.⁵⁾

• $1,993,992.00 awarded “to find new lead molecules against diseases that disproportionately affect the world's poorest populations” from October 2018 until January 2023.⁶⁾

• $6,616,077.00 awarded “to identify and address ethical challenges, ethics-related risk, and policy gaps that have the potential to undermine the impact of potential life-saving technologies and interventions in global health and development research” from June 2015 until July 2021.⁷⁾

Additional grants from the Gates Foundation are currently being offered to McMaster:

• Up to $200,000.00 USD to explore using “Metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing to Detect, Identify, and Characterize Pathogens”. The grant period is for up to 24 months and is co-administered with the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The intended result of the funding is to “lead to a network of pathogen detection nodes that could provide increased global transparency into regional pathogen distribution in an accurate and timely manner, and in ultimate support of a global pathogen surveillance network.”⁸⁾

• Up to $200,000.00 USD to “identify areas for transformational innovation in service of national NTD [neglected tropical disease] programs” in Africa.⁹⁾

• Up to $500,000.00 USD to increase the participation in “Digital Health Services for Pregnant Women to Support Antenatal Risk Stratification in Sub-Saharan Africa”.¹⁰⁾

• Up to $3,000,000.00 USD to build “a stronger malaria mathematical modeling ecosystem in sub-Saharan Africa”.¹¹⁾

McMaster received two grants in July 2021 from the Government of Canada for a project titled “Encouraging vaccine confidence among pregnant and breastfeeding Canadians” and a second project titled “Immune Nations: The Vaccine Project.”^{12) 13)} The total amount awarded was $95,500. It was awarded through a grant program called “Encouraging Vaccine Confidence in Canada” jointly administered by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).¹⁴⁾