CQDM teams with Brain Canada and OBI to launch neuroscience applied R&D program

The Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM) is joining forces with neuroscience research organization to launch the largest funding program in its history. CQDM announced a partnership with Montreal-based Brain Canada and is finalizing an agreement with the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) to launch the Focus on Brain program worth between $10 million and $15 million, targeting a host of technology areas that could help Canada sustain and advance its status as a powerhouse in neuroscience research and knowledge translation.

CDQM and its partners hope to fund between seven and 10 multidisciplinary research teams with $1.5 million over three years to advance technologies, platforms and tools to the point where industry can take over and move them into the marketplace. The program also serves as a key mechanism for realizing CDQM's aim to expand beyond its Quebec base across the country.

"That's how we started to think about this program. Brain Canada is a natural partner as it's national in scope and works closer with pharma," says CQDM president and CEO Diane Gosselin. "We don't have the resources alone to expand across Canada so we need partners to co-fund and give us visibility."

With a focus on translation or applied research, the program won't fund drug development nor will it support the R&D activities of big pharma.

What it will do is fund research that is "synergistic with major Canadian and international initiatives" with a strong preference for the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in collaboration with the academic sector. Gosselin says it will consider proposals that tackle major issues such as crossing the blood-brain barrier. Projects must be pre-competitive with clear proof-of-concept and the potential, for example, to combine it with an investigational new drug.

For projects backed by CQDM and Brain Canada, funding will be shared on a 50-50 basis. The OBI will fund one third of projects which have Ontario participation. CQDM's resources are drawn from fees paid by its industry members while Brain Canada will use money raised through its federal matching scheme (see below).

"The program allows us to de-risk research and fund things we couldn't do otherwise, both applied and translational," says Gosselin. "It's tough to find funding for this area of research right now. It's too early for venture capital and there's little alternative funding for early-stage research."

A key component of the Focus on Brain program is the use of CQDM's mentorship structure. The organization's industry partners can each provide a mentor for successful projects, with the potential of several mentors per project. Including industry representatives with experience in the drug discovery and development process helps to ensure that projects are relevant and well aligned with industry needs, increasing their likelihood of adoption and commercialization.

For Brain Canada, the mentorship component and CQDM's already impressive track record of linking large multinational pharmaceutical firms with SMEs and academics sold the organization on backing the program.

"We've never had this type of collaboration before linking pharma with SMEs on the outcome side. It's a first for us. CQDM funds industry and we fund academic. It's very strategic and took months to develop the program," says Inez Jabalpurwala, Brain Canada's president and CEO. "

Jabalpurwala says the Focus on Brain program has the potential to transform neuroscience in Canada, with student, post docs and SMEs benefitting from established investigators. And while the focus of the program is razor sharp, the definition of each technology is sufficiently broad to allow a wide range of researchers to participate.

"When we made the May 28th announcement at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, people breathed a sigh of relief. There's broad application," says Jabalpurwala. "And for us, it allows us to focus on a different area of neuroscience research."

R$