Ataxia Telangiectasia Children's Project Inc

Research and Clinical GrantsThe A-T Children's Project provides competitive awards for scientific and clinical research grants related to finding life-improving therapies and a cure for ataxia-telangiectasia. Scientific excellence and relevance to A-T are the paramount criteria used to select research projects. Grant award decisions are made through a careful and detailed, two-tiered peer-review selection process. Consistent with the urgency felt by all families impacted by this disease, the A-T Children's Project's current focus is on funding innovative research strategies that look at A-T in new ways and that include a clear 'yes or 'no' answer to the hypothesis rather than merely defining a mechanism. Highest priority is given to projects that, while drawing on basic discoveries, include creative strategies for suggesting and evaluating specific disease-modifying and symptomatic interventions.

Conferences and Research SupportThe A-T Children's Project holds scientific meetings and workshops regularly as a way to encourage more cooperation between A-T research teams, to reduce redundancy in their work, and to bring scientists from different fields together to generate new research strategies. The agendas always include presentations of unpublished data and open discussions and debate. The Organization also sponsors scientific conferences whose mission falls within this realm. The Organization has found that these scientific meetings, properly orchestrated generate new research strategies, help to form new collaborations between previously competing labs, and encourage sharing of limited patient tissue samples and animal models of A-T between labs. They consistently help to accelerate research progress. Additionally, staff of the A-T Children's Project coordinate the Global A-T Family Data Platform, a patient-driven effort overseen by A-T families and experts worldwide through which health information, genetic, and potentially other types of data about people with A-T can be shared with researchers, enabling them to access important patient data from around the world quickly, securely, and efficiently, hopefully leading to new discoveries.