Canada needs more infrastructure and better funding to support interdisciplinary research – including brain research – by early-career researchers, say leaders working in the area.

Universities need to broaden academic evaluation for promotion, more collaboration is necessary between academia and industry, they said during a Canadian Science Policy Centre webinar titled “Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research,” organized by the Brain Canada Foundation.

Also, more domestic capital is required for scaling startup health tech companies, so they’re not forced to leave Canada to grow, they said.

“If we don't build these pieces, we'll continue along this pathway of our research being totally world-class, batting way above our weight, but not leading to that economic impact that I think we're all wanting,” said Aaron Phillips (photo at right), associate professor and associate dean, innovation and commercialization in the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary.

The countries Canada compares itself to have more large innovation-driven firms, like biotech and advanced tech, that often come out of universities, he said.

But business investment in R&D in Canada is about 50 percent lower than the average in peer countries, he noted.

“So if we want to build investment, if we want to build more companies that actually will [decrease] that 50-percent gap, we need our university system and that ecosystem to change,” Phillips said.

Doing great science is not enough by itself to actually develop a therapy or a viable health innovation that will be commercialized and will go directly to the patient, said Véronique Dugas (photo at left), president and CEO of the Quebec Consortium for Drug Discovery (CQDM).

Canada is seeing more early-career researchers who have the interest and willingness of becoming researcher entrepreneurs, “and this is a really positive shift,” she said.

But it also comes with several significant challenges and a very steep learning curve, because researchers typically are trained to generate knowledge, not necessarily to navigate the very complex drug development reality and landscape, Dugas said.

“And so they need to learn all of that at a pace that is difficult to maintain,” especially for early-career researchers, she said.

More exposure to and collaboration with industry for early-career researchers – without them taking all the risks associated with the development of new therapeutics or research tools – would be beneficial, Dugas said.

Dugas said CQDM works to create opportunities for researchers to connect, network and partner with industry. For example, CQDM’s Connect Pharma Call for Ideas enables Canadian innovators to present their innovative therapeutics to pharmaceutical companies.

However, Canada lacks the infrastructure to adequately support early-career researchers in pursuing interdisciplinary research and careers, said early-career researcher Cindy Barha (photo at right), assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary and Canadian Research Chair, Tier 2, in neuroscience.

Researchers operate within a research funding and academic rewards system that isn’t designed to support interdisciplinary research, she said. “It's designed, in my opinion, to conduct sort of in-depth research within one narrow discipline, and not really designed to do integrative research across fields.”

Interdisciplinary research proposals are frequently reviewed by panels with members from single disciplines, she noted. “So I think we need better training of our reviewers in this sort of interdisciplinary evaluation.”

It would be useful to have dedicated cross-agency research funding streams, along with research priorities that are focused on cross-disciplinary research questions, Barha said.

Interdisciplinary research takes a long time and it markedly slows down an early-career researcher’s scientific publication timeline, she pointed out. And academic researchers are evaluated on the number and quality of their publications.

“So I think one thing we could do is maybe increase that early-career window to accommodate this slower sort of interdisciplinary publication timeline,” Barha said.

Also, early-career researchers usually don’t get the training to look at their research with the idea of commercializing it and what skills would be required, she said. That training could start at the Master’s degree level, she added.

Universities need to incentivize early-career researchers to stay in Canada

Dugas said another challenge in Canada when it comes to doing collaborative research is that the intellectual policy and  IP management mechanism landscape “is fragmented across the country and across institutions.”

This makes it more difficult for companies to collaborate with academia, because every time a partner changes, everything about the collaboration has to be redone and that negotiation may take a very long time, she said.

“Sometimes, very promising discoveries are left on the shelf because it's just not possible to achieve an agreement between institutions and the private sector,” Dugas said.

Having a more predictable, stable, harmonized way of managing IP in Canada would be very helpful, she added.

Early-career researcher Grant Bruno (photo at right), a member of the Samson Cree Nation and an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta, said Indigenous researchers are in great demand, so much so that many Indigenous scholars often don’t do post-doctoral work because universities want to hire them as faculty right away.

However, some Indigenous early-career researchers then go through “a very negative experience where they get all these demands and these requests and they don't have a supportive chair or anything like that,” he said. “They get overwhelmed and then they leave the institution because it's just too much.”

For example, Bruno is the director of Indigenous health for his department, the academic lead for the Indigenous children's health research for the Women and Children's Health Research Institute, the scientific advisor for the Kids Brain Health Network, and co-chair for the Indigenous advisory for the National Autism Strategy. 

“There's such a large demand that as early-career researchers, we're often told you've got to say ‘Yes’ to things, when in fact I can't,” he said.

“There's absolutely no way because then I end up doing everybody else's work and I can't focus on the work that is actually having impact with the families that I work with in the community,” he added.

Another issue is that many universities don’t recognize researchers’ work with communities when it comes to academic evaluation and promotion, he said.

Bruno, who said he has a level of responsibility for his community, was able to negotiate a clause in his university contract saying that all his community work counts as research and recognized and rewarded as such.

Phillips said there are three changes that urgently need to be made to improve early-career researchers’ prospects and encourage them to remain in Canada.

First, incentives need to be aligned internally within the university, he said. “This means rewarding not just publications and grants, but real-world outcomes like partnerships, clinical adoption [and] company creation.”

“We need promotion systems that value patents and large amounts of capital being raised inside people's startup companies, for example.”

Universities also need to find translational career tracks for early-career researchers, so those who want to translate their findings into real-world or economic benefit can pursue impact, which does take longer, without being penalized, Phillips said.

“We also need internal funding opportunities that are embedded into commercialization that support that bridging the gap between discovery and application,” he said.

There’s a lot of hesitancy from universities on having too much commercialization activity happening for a variety of reasons, but largely due to provincial legislation limiting their activities as not-for-profit entities, Phillips said.

Yet government wants universities to be economic drivers in the community, “so there's a constant battle” between policies and innovation initiatives, he added.

Canada also needs simpler, faster intellectual property policies that make it easier to work with industry and build companies, Phillips said, adding “we need to align the incentives with our outcomes.”

Bridge between academic, industry and health systems are required

Canada also requires stronger, structured bridges between academia, industry and health systems, Phillips said. “We need folks that have regulatory expertise [and] implementation partners – early customers are critical.

“We need standardized, faster partnership agreements so collaboration doesn't get slowed down,” he added. “We need integrated translational hubs that include regulatory and reimbursement.”

Health systems should act as active partners and early adopters of innovative technologies, Phillips said.

In addition, Canada must improve the  ability to scale companies, he said. “Canada produces these super-promising companies, but very few grow into large, globally competitive firms.”

These companies require “way more domestic capital for scale-up,” particularly from institutional investors, he said.

Canada also needs to take the initiative on adjusting its procurement systems, especially in in health care and universities, Phillips said.

“I know too many early-phase companies that are directly or indirectly told that they need to go prove their technology in the U.S. and then maybe they'll come back and get a contract here in Canada from where they developed it.”

Allison Sekuler (photo at right), is president and chief scientist at the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation, the Sandra Brotman Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education,  a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, and also has a faculty position at McMaster University

CABHI is Canada’s only innovation catalyst specifically focused in the aging and brain health space, she noted.

CABHI has invested over $200 million in funding since 2015, which has yielded follow-on funding of over a billion dollars within that short period of time and led to hundreds of different innovations getting introduced into the ecosystem, Sekuler said.

CABHI works within this specific area of aging and brain health innovation across all of the technology readiness levels from Level 3, so past the foundational research stage, to when researchers are ready to start translating that research into innovations. CABHI’s support continues all the way from design and develop through validate and refine, and to spread, scale and adopt.

“So there are programs for everybody, starting as students all the way through CEOs at every single one of those stages,” Sekuler said.

“What we're talking about here is really precision innovation. Each individual needs something different, even if they're all at the same stage, even if they're all doing the same kind of thing,” she added.

Sekuler said CABHI has been able to take people from being early-stage researchers with an idea through to becoming CEOs of companies going on international trade missions within three or four years.

“That’s because it's a really focused approach [with CABHI] that can follow individuals throughout all of those stages, give them what they need at those different times, recognize that every single person is different, but also helps to connect folks so that they don't feel like they're just in this on their own,” she said.

Mira Puri (photo at right), scientific director, health science and research at the Azrieli Foundation, one of Canada’s largest funders of neuroscience, said the foundation works across the full continuum of neuroscience, from neurons to networks to neighbourhoods.

That means everything from fundamental neuroscience at the laboratory bench to clinical trials to community services for neurodiverse people, she said.

It also means that building the early-career researcher pipeline is a cross-cutting priority for the Asrielli Foundation, which as supported over 100 Azrieli future leaders in Canadian brain research through partnership with Brain Canada.

Role of philanthropic funding and knowledge mobilization

Philanthropic funding’s role is to fill gaps where public funding isn’t available or adequate, such as for interdisciplinary research and underdeveloped areas of research, Puri said. 

For example, the Azrieli Foundation’s science grants program was specifically designed to fill the gap in neurodevelopmental research funding that public granting agencies can't cover as comprehensively as needed for the vast frontier of discovery that's still required in this area, she said.

Another example is in building capacity in translational research in brain health and medicine that's been missing, such as the foundation’s CHILD-BRIGHT Network Fellowships specifically focused on developing a Canadian workforce in patient-oriented research, Puri said.

“Providing a bit of funding and access to those training grounds is a really critical and underfunded piece of the pipeline that rarely gets named in terms of the human expertise that's actually needed [to achieve desired goals],” she said.

Another role for philanthropy is “catalysis,” or taking early risks strategically on researchers’ innovations so the researchers can then attract stable funding and partner, Puri said.

The Azrieli Foundation also works on providing “life stability” and jobs for early-career researchers, she said.

The foundation has five centres of excellence in Canada that have produced faculty hires and promotions, to help retain researchers in Canada, Piri said. “So if we want  early-career researchers to build careers in Canada, they really need jobs and not just grants.”

Puri said one of the strategies that the foundation uses to build the innovation economy is to support more in-house innovation in the institutions. 

She pointed to the foundation’s Precision Child Health Initiative across two hospitals, at SickKids and St. Justine, where the focus is to drive innovative therapeutics and their trajectory across the investment “valley of death” internally, utilizing the Foundation’s funding.

All the panelists stressed the importance of knowledge mobilization and continuous communication with the people and communities affected by the research.

Sekuler said it’s important to communicate and mobilize knowledge through diverse platforms.

“That storytelling is just so important. If the politicians don't understand why what we're doing is important, we're not going to keep getting the funding to do what we need to do,” she said.

As for advice for early-stage startups teams developing dementia-focused technologies to engage caregivers and domain experts, Sekuler advised companies to bring on a high-profile clinician as soon as possible, and consider making them an advisor in return for equity.

“They’re going to have skin the game. They’re going to be a lot more contributed,” she said.

Sekuler also suggested startups check out a venture capital firm called HaloHealth, a physician and dentist angel investment group that can offer contacts and mentors with domain knowledge.

Also, interact with the end-use communities of the innovation “early and often,” she said. “It’s never too early to start that engagement.”

“You might think you've got the world's greatest idea, but if you don't check in with people to see is this something that they might be interested in using and get that advice early on, that's not going to be something that's worth investing all of your time in,” Sekuler said.

Get the people in charge of procurement on board, which will help design clinical trials to produce the right kind of results, she advised.

“I've seen so many companies who come to us too late and have spent literally millions of dollars doing trials that aren't giving the kind of results that people [planning to purchase the product] are looking for,” she said.

Sekuler praised the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Alliance Society program, which supports at research that has an impact on Canada and doesn’t have to involve commercialization.

Webinar moderator Fiona Sanderson (photo at right), senior program manager at Brain Canada, asked the panelists what they thought about the Mark Carney government’s recent $1.7-billion commitment over 12 years to fund the Canada Global Impact + Research Talent Initiative, to attract top international scientists to Canada.

Dugas said attracting top researchers is important, but so is retaining top researchers in Canada. “We just need to make sure that we have measure to achieve both.”

Phillips said he was surprised that retaining researchers wasn’t part of the funding program.

“I think it will achieve the recruitment goals of bringing in some top researchers, but it may create some darker sentiment on the folks that are already here and doing really well,” he said. “So, I think just retention should be brought up at future cycles of this program and some more thought given to that.”

Puri said she took the government’s funding announcement as “an important signal to allow Canada to position itself as a really top destination for research.”

I take it as a signal to enhance and promote some of those ecosystem-building activities that will be required to sort of fill the gaps that this kind of move creates. It will need more operating dollars. It will need a lot more systemic support,” she said.

Sanderson summarized the challenges facing early-career brain researchers in Canada: “We need stronger [career] pathways, clearer supports, better mentorship, more inclusive structures, and intentional alignment between discovery, translation and implementation.”

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