New program aims to stimulate $100 million in private donations for brain research

By Debbie Lawes

It's taken more than a decade of painstaking fundraising, pilot trials and unprecedented cooperation, but Canada has finally launched a coordinated program for brain research that offers the best hope yet of developing the diagnostics, treatments, and ultimately cures, for more than 1,000 brain disorders, including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and epilepsy. Launched May 3, the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF) will match $100 million from the federal government with private donations to boost both basic and applied funding for neuroscience by about 25%. It represents the largest single investment in brain research ever made in Canada.

The CBRF signals a departure from how brain research has been funded and studied in the past. Grants of $1.5 million over three years, plus $20,000 more annually for networking, will be awarded through a peer-reviewed, open competition to multidisciplinary, multi-institutional teams across a range of neurological and psychiatric brain disorders. The first call for applications went out last week. The goal is to hold two-to-three competitions annually.

And, in what surely must be a relief for the researchers themselves, Brain Canada will provide the matching dollars, allowing scientists to focus on projects rather than fundraising. Additional funding will be provided for fellowships and to help operate national technology platforms in neuroimaging, neurogenomics, neuroproteomics and disease models.

"It's an approach to brain research that hasn't been done before," says Inez Jabalpurwala, president/CEO of Montreal-based Brain Canada Foundation, which developed the fund in partnership with the Canadian Association for Neuroscience. Unlike the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), she says their grants will not be disease-specific, will support teams rather than individual researchers and will have more latitude in funding riskier, as opposed to incremental, research.

"We are taking a ‘one system' approach to the brain, recognizing that the brain is one complex system and not just a collection of diseases," she says. "We will focus on the underlying causes of multiple neurological diseases and conditions, where a single breakthrough has the potential to create therapies for multiple conditions."

By bringing all neurological and psychiatric conditions under one research tent, Brain Canada believes it can attract large donations from companies, individual philanthropists and non-governmental organizations. Ottawa committed in Budget 2011 to match donations dollar for dollar until FY16-17.

"We are primarily targeting major donors," she explains. "It's not going to be based on events, grassroots fundraising or direct mail campaigns … to ensure that we don't interfere with the fundraising of disease-specific charities that raise most of their money through smaller gifts but in larger numbers."

Jabalpurwala describes their potential donors as an untapped market. "There hasn't been the same kind of support from the private sector for the brain as there has been for other disease groups. We see this as an opportunity to attract a lot of new donors to this field."

Brain Canada has assembled a high-powered board of directors representing industry, venture capital, academia and non-governmental, including former Canadian ambassador to the US Michael Wilson, governor general David Johnston (patron) and top executives from AIMIA Inc., SECOR, London Drugs Ltd and Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.

"From the beginning, it's been bringing business and science together, while working within a framework of business discipline, accountability and good governance," says Jabalpurwala.

Canadian researchers are funded at about one-third of the level per capita of their American colleagues, yet are credited with several of the most important discoveries in neuroscience over the past decade.

Dr. David Kaplan, a senior scientist at SickKids Hospital in Toronto and co-chair of Brain Canada's scientific advisory council, told a sub-committee of the House Standing Committee on Health in March that this success is due, in part, to Canada's strength in collaborating between scientific disciplines and institutions. Increasingly, the global research community is recognizing that coordination — more than resources — is essential to new discoveries and translating those discoveries into treatments.

"We work together and play together much better than America … We're known for bang for the buck," said Kaplan, who moved to Canada from the US 15 years ago.

Brain Canada is a pioneer in a one-system approach that marries brain research to public-private funding. Its predecessor, NeuroScience Canada, launched a pilot program in 2003 that provided $8 million over several years to five research teams, each of which had a breakthrough discovery every year of their grant. Other countries are now adopting similar models-no surprise considering that brain diseases represent 38% of the global burden of disease, more than cancer and cardiovascular combined.

The US recently launched One Mind for Research, an initiative led by former congressman Patrick Kennedy and vice president Joseph Biden that aims to raise US$15 billion over 10 years with support from the private sector and government. Brain Canada has had initial discussions on potential collaborations with One Mind, and will be meeting with the group's leaders later this month in Los Angeles at their inaugural annual meeting.

"Their public-private partnership model came after the Brain Canada model, but it's certainly the way people are starting to look at the brain around the world," says Jabalpurwala.

Similar activities are happening across Canada. Brain Canada recently signed an agreement with the Ontario Brain Institute to explore opportunities for collaboration. Launched in November 2010 with an annual operating budget of $100 million, the OBI is also taking a one-system approach to brain research but with a stronger focus on commercialization (R$, Nov. 29/10). Jabalpurwala says they will consider partnering with organizations like the National Research Council on technologies with commercial potential.

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