The myriad benefits of a national health research network

As CoVaRR-Net moves toward completion of its mandate at the end of March 2025, several key CoVaRR-Net members reflect on the multiple advantages such a network has brought to health research in Canada.

“Many of us had never met each other before. The Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (or CoVaRR-Net) was all about bringing together people, who had different kinds of research expertise, during a national and global health crisis to solve a common problem. For me, it was powerful to build on each other’s skills and create a pyramid of knowledge that isn’t possible when you’re siloed,” says Dr. Sally Otto, Co-Lead of CoVaRR-Net’s Computational Analysis, Modelling and Evolutionary Outcomes (CAMEO) Pillar 6, Killam University Professor and Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia.

“Infectious disease research and response require multidisciplinary fields and CoVaRR-Net has added a huge amount of synergy. It allowed us to be very efficient in getting interdisciplinary input on tough problems and tough problems usually do require multidisciplinary solutions,” says Dr. Fiona Brinkman, Deputy in CoVaRR-Net’s CAMEO Pillar, and Distinguished Professor in Bioinformatics and Genomics at Simon Fraser University. “When the Network had to solve difficult problems, the relationships and trust built up between people were extremely important. A key value of a network is that it fosters and facilitates collaborative health research across the country.”

A notable example of accelerating research through cross-disciplinary synergy can be seen through the innovative work of basic scientists in Pillars 1 to 5: “These scientists worked very closely together, and a major benefit was mapping the collective assets of the laboratory research landscape: who’s doing sequencing; who’s looking at immune responses in the lab; who has this or that variant of concern; and who can do what rapidly, etc.” explains Dr. Marc-André Langlois, CoVaRR-Net’s Executive Director and Professor of Molecular Virology and Intrinsic Immunity at the University of Ottawa. “A network was the ultimate enabler for collaboration and efficiency, speeding up research and results considerably, allowing labs across Canada not to reinvent the wheel and to save money and time.”

The breadth of CoVaRR-Net in bringing together basic and clinical scientists from multiple disciplines with computational modelling and public health policy experts made it possible to rapidly generate, translate and communicate new research findings about the cavalcade of new and emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern across Canada through different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Network enabled Pillar 8, for example, to collect data, analyze and provide some research insights and recommendations of value for the consideration of decision-makers provincially and nationally. We played the dual role of sharing our research findings with those who need to know like public health leaders and decision-makers, and to learn what topics the decision-makers wanted more information on,” says Dr. Nazeem Muhajarine, Co-Lead of CoVaRR-Net’s Public Health, Health Systems and Social Policy Impact Pillar 8 and Professor at the University of Saskatchewan.

Creative collaborations with Indigenous researchers and communities

“From CIEDAR’s perspective, one of the Network’s greatest benefits has been the opportunity to work with all these bench scientists from wet labs in trying to see how we can partner to meet the needs of Indigenous Peoples and integrate Indigenous voices with bench researchers’ programs,” says Dr. Kimberly Huyser, Lead of CoVaRR-Net’s Indigenous Engagement, Development and Research (CIEDAR) Pillar 7 and Associate Professor, University of British Columbia.

“For example, we collaborated with Dr. Jason Kindrachuk and Dr. Angela Rasmussen, co-leads of Pillar 2, about culturally appropriate ways of working with Indigenous Peoples to collect viral specimens from various animal species for their research. We’re now working with Pillar 1 – Immunology and Vaccine Protection – on bird flu,” says Dr. Huyser, noting that the principles guiding collaborative research with Indigenous communities were embedded in the Network and 62 CoVaRR-Net members will have received Principles of OCAP^® (ownership, control, access, and possession) training by the end of March 2025. (OCAP^® Principles establish how First Nations’ data, information, and cultural knowledge should be collected, accessed, used, and shared.)

“We also worked closely with CoVaRR-Net’s EDI&I [Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigeneity] team and Dr. Angela Crawley, Director of CoVaRR-Net’s Biobank, on CoVaRR-Net’s Universal Data and Biological Materials Transfer Agreement (UDBMTA) to ensure that if biological samples are collected, stored, and distributed by the Biobank for research, the researchers must abide by OCAP^® principles,” explains Dr. Huyser.

“CIEDAR has enabled the Network to better engage with Indigenous researchers and do research that includes Indigenous Peoples. The CIEDAR team has also been successful in educating and showing other health researchers across the Network appropriate ways of doing research in partnership with Indigenous Peoples,” adds Dr. Langlois.

Biobank, Wastewater, CCABL3 & other Major Initiatives created new capabilities

Along with 10 Pillars, the Network created five Major Initiatives including the CoVaRR-Net Biobank and Data Platform, Wastewater Surveillance Research Group (WWSRG), and the Canadian Consortium of Academic Biosafety Level 3 Laboratories (CCABL3), in addition to CAMEO and CIEDAR. “Our Major Initiatives provide an important infrastructure where experts from across Canada collaborate within specific areas of research,” says Dr. Langlois.

The CoVaRR-Net Biobank and Data Platform, for example, created a unique and essential resource for pandemic preparedness by enabling rapid sharing of biological samples, resources, and data related to SARS-CoV-2 among researchers across Canada. This was made possible through its novel UDBMTA, which connects more than 30 participating Canadian research institutions.

CCABL3 brought together experts from academic biosafety level 3 (BSL3) labs across the country to create a Canadian hub for data, resources, and information. It facilitates a more collaborative future for scientific research on highly pathogenic organisms and aims to strengthen Canada’s response to biological threats by bolstering biosafety research and preparedness.

“In 2021, we had very little idea of who was doing what in Canada in terms of expertise, what type of facilities were available in different provinces, and what kind of work they were doing in those facilities, so we had to do a mapping of the resources that were available in Canada’s BSL3 labs,” explains Dr. Louis Flamand, Interim Chair, CCABL3, Lead of Pillar 3 (Virology), and Professor and Chair, Department of Microbiology, Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Laval University.

As PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 was scaled back during the pandemic, the Wastewater Surveillance Research Group’s development of more advanced tools to track SARS-CoV-2, influenza and RSV in wastewater became increasingly important. Tracking pathogens in wastewater and through surface testing can also detect rising disease incidence in communities earlier than traditional clinical case reporting, providing a vital early warning system for health threats of several kinds. “CAMEO worked with the wastewater surveillance group to exchange knowledge about what viral variants were seen in wastewater versus case data,” explains Dr. Brinkman.

The Network opened many new channels for its wastewater scientists to collaborate and share their expertise within the network and externally. “Throughout the pandemic, the CoVaRR-Net network provided the important opportunity for members of the wastewater monitoring community located across the country to connect with each other, and perhaps more importantly, it connected our wastewater monitoring research silo to other research silos across the country, working on topics such as Indigenous engagement, biobanking, bioethics, genetics and sequencing, and many others,” says Dr. Robert Delatolla, Director of CoVaRR-Net’s Wastewater Surveillance Research Group, Viral Genomics & Sequencing Pillar 5 Deputy, and Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa.

Duotang, a genomic epidemiology analyses and mathematical modelling notebook created by CAMEO researchers, has been a critical tool in helping CoVaRR-Net researchers, other health researchers, industry, public health labs, and public health authorities stay on top of the viral evolution and spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Canada on a weekly basis. “CAMEO excels at surveillance and tracking the evolution of the virus in Canada and internationally, and in modelling different scenarios to help inform public health decision-makers,” says Dr Langlois.

Being multidisciplinary allowed the Network to be responsive and adapt quickly to new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other new pathogens. When it was first reported last spring that an Influenza variant of concern (H5N1) had been newly detected in dairy cattle in the United States, the Network had the cross-disciplinary capability to respond rapidly. “Dr. Jeff Joy of CAMEO and Dr. Rasmussen of Pillar 2 rapidly worked with an interdisciplinary international team, co-authoring a leading scientific report on how H5N1 most likely jumped from birds into dairy cattle, and the significance of this. Dr. Rasmussen, working with others, quickly checked Canada’s milk supply, showing the milk supply was safe,” says Dr. Brinkman. CoVaRR-Net researchers from several other Pillars got involved in research to investigate whether H5N1 was a high risk in Canada as well. “This is an example of how rapid response – identifying also when a threat elsewhere in the world isn’t present in Canada – is important. It enables people and industries to continue more normally.”

The Network provides a model of how a multidisciplinary group of highly productive scientists and researchers from across Canada can work effectively and efficiently to generate and share new knowledge about new and emerging pathogens with public-health decision-makers and the larger Canadian population. “Perhaps the greatest success obtained through CoVaRR-Net is the establishment of a functional network of leading Canadian scientists that can be rapidly mobilized to unite their efforts in response to a crisis, whether it be a new and dangerous biological threat, or a more virulent and transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variant emerging and spreading rapidly in the population,” states Dr. Flamand.

“The Network was very successful in creating many initiatives that otherwise wouldn’t have been created. I’m hopeful that some of our Major Initiatives will be able to continue and build on their unique capabilities after CoVaRR-Net ends by securing their own research funding,” says Dr. Langlois.