CIHR results...so depressing

The results have been released for the latest competition for operating grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (Canada's equivalent of NIH).  Our proposal was ranked 13/72 by its assessment committee (Microbiology and Infectious Disease), but they only funded 11.

This is our 7th failed CIHR proposal in a row.  They all had good scores, and several, like this one, were very close to being funded.  The scores show that our proposals do keep getting better (this time 4.5/5), but the funding cutoffs also keep rising and we're never quite good enough.

Will I try again?  Perhaps not.  This was the last round under the old funding system, and the new system is even less favourable to the small-lab fundamental research that we do. 

I'm not quitting research.  For this year we have funds left from a previous CIHR grant (must be all spent by the end of March), and after that we'll potter along on our very small NSERC grant.  Luckily most of what we do isn't very expensive, but I can now only support one grad student, supplemented with several excellent undergrads who'll work mostly for free.