MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Welcome to the November 2007 edition of NeuroEcho. In this issue, we are pleased to provide more detail about the two NeuroScience Canada Brain Repair Program teams/projects that were selected in the second competition. The teams have now commenced their first year of research, and each has prepared a summary of their plan for this year.

In addition to the research, we thought that you would enjoy learning more about the researchers: a glimpse of the people behind the science. We begin with an interview with Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau—one of the Brain Repair Program team leaders—in which he shares his passion for science. . .and how he spends his time outside the lab. In future issues, we will feature interviews or profiles of other members of the two teams.

We also provide a report from the first recipient of the Dr. Hubert van Tol Travel Fellowship, Long-Jun Wu, a member of the Brain Repair Program team led by Dr. Michael Salter. This fellowship was established to honour the memory of Dr. Hubert van Tol, who recognized the importance and value of international experiences, particularly for younger investigators.

Finally, from March to May, NeuroScience Canada and its partners held a series of roundtable consultations in four Canadian cities with the Public Policy Forum (PPF). You will read that over the summer, PPF prepared a report of those meetings, including a summary of the key points that emerged, and recommendations about how a coalition of neuroscience stakeholders would be most effective in disseminating a common set of messages to governments and the general public. The roundtables and report were possible thanks to the generosity of the Max Bell Foundation, which provided NeuroScience Canada with funds to significantly advance our public awareness and advocacy activities.

To keep updated on all other NeuroScience Canada activities, I invite you to visit our website: www.neurosciencecanada.ca. We welcome your comments and feedback, including content suggestions for the site and for future issues of NeuroEcho.

As this is the last issue for 2007, let me take this opportunity to wish you a joyous holiday season and a wonderful start to 2008!

HIGHLIGHTS OF RESEARCH PROGRAMS

Three Brain Repair Program teams completed their three-year grant

The three teams from the first Brain Repair Program competition have now completed their three-year grants. Funding from NeuroScience Canada has enabled them to make a number of key breakthroughs:

Dr. Miller’s team was able to demonstrate that stem cells isolated from mammalian skin can generate nervous system cells that promote anatomical and functional recovery following spinal cord injury. They were also able to define and characterize a novel precursor cell from the rodent and the human brain that has the potential for use in spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis. Finally, they identified a protein that is important in regulating the life versus death of mammalian nerve cells, findings with implications for the injured and degenerating nervous system.

Dr. Michael Salter and his team have discovered that interactions between nerve cells and non-neuronal cells known as microglia in the spinal cord are critical for the development and maintenance of chronic pain after peripheral nerve injury. They have defined a series of cellular signaling steps that are required for these interactions and are using this knowledge to develop new generation of drugs aimed at selectively targeting and treating chronic neuropathic pain.

Finally, using a novel drug design which interferes with cellular processes responsible for synaptic plasticity, Dr. Wang’s team has blocked brain adaptations linked to addiction and psychotic behavior. They have also utilized groundbreaking information about synapse formation during early development to create a unique animal model of autism, and are developing new 'interference peptides' as possible treatments for this devastating childhood illness.

More about the two new Brain Repair Program teams

Two additional research projects were selected for funding in June 2007 through the second Brain Repair Program competition: Mitochondrial dysfunction and neuronal demise: Insights provided by Parkinson’s disease genes, led by Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau (Montreal); and Harnessing beneficial aspects of neuroinflammation for regenerating the central nervous system, led by Dr. V. Wee Yong (Calgary). We asked the leaders of each team to provide an overview of their research plans for the coming year.

During the first year of their grant, Dr. Trudeau's team will tackle a number of objectives aimed at evaluating the impact of various Parkinson’s disease gene mutations on the function of intracellular organelles called mitochondria, and on the function of neurons, and in particular, dopamine-secreting neurons in the brain. The team will focus its initial efforts on the LRRK2, DJ-1, Pink1 and Parkin genes. Experiments will be performed in mouse neurons as well as in the fly. Drs. Yong and Park will develop new approaches to knockdown the function of these genes in the fly and develop behavioural assays to monitor the functional impact. Drs. Park and McBride will expand on their recent efforts to develop approaches to monitor multiple readouts of mitochondrial function. Drs. Fon, Trudeau and Schlossmacher will concentrate their initial efforts on the Parkin gene and will evaluate the impact of its gene deletion on mitochondrial function and dopamine neuron physiology as well as study the proteins that it interacts with and the regulation of its expression. These studies should lead to major progress in our understanding of the causes of brain damage in the context of Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Yong's team will seek to fine-tune the inflammatory response so that the detrimental aspects of inflammation on the nervous system can be inhibited; at the same time, it is hoped that the beneficial sides of inflammation and their positive effects on the nervous system can be promoted. In Year 1, the collaboration between the laboratories of Drs. Power, Rivest and Yong will generate different subsets of inflammatory cells and these will be tested on neurons in culture and in a slice preparation of the spinal cord through collaboration with Dr. Stys. Whether inflammatory cells ultimately injure axons through a phenomenon referred to as excitotoxicity will be investigated. These experiments address the role of particular immune subsets on neural integrity and they seek neuroprotective strategies to prevent harm to neurons and nerves. To extend from these nerve studies, the clinical team of Drs. Costello and Metz will study patients with inflammation of the optic nerve using an ophthalmologic device, optical coherence tomography (OCT). Year 1 will involve setting up the OCT unit and getting staff trained. Moreover, Drs. Costello and Metz will initiate the longitudinal follow-up of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients in a study that will last years, in order to define the relationship between optic nerve inflammation, loss of nerve fibers, and possible recovery. These clinical studies will set the background to plan trials not only for neuroprotection but also for repair, since a third component of Dr. Yong’s team is to enhance remyelination (repair of myelin) in models of demyelination. In this regard, Year 1 will also see the initiation of collaboration between Drs. Stys, Rivest, Power and Yong on repair strategies. Of note is that the beneficial properties of a normally functioning immune system will be tapped to foster repair. Overall, and given the increasing recognition that inflammation plays a vital role in injury and recovery, the experiments are relevant not only to inflammatory processes such as MS and stroke, but also in normal aging.

Dr. Hubert van Tol Travel Fellowship

On May 23, NeuroScience Canada announced the first recipient of the Dr. Hubert van Tol Travel Fellowship at our 2007 Annual General Meeting. Dr. Monica Seger-van Tol, wife of the late Dr. Hubert van Tol, presented this prestigious award to Long-Jun Wu, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Toronto. Mr. Wu attended a training course entitled Imaging Structure & Function in the Nervous System in Cold Spring Harbor, USA, between July 24 and August 13, 2007. The course provided theoretical and practical knowledge about how to utilize advanced vital light microscopy, which was beneficial to his current work on brain microglial functions in chronic pain. This course greatly enhanced his research skills and contributed to his experiments – something he would not have been able to accomplish without the van Tol award.

NeuroScience Canada is honoured to be associated with the Dr. Hubert van Tol Travel Fellowship, through which we are recognizing Dr. van Tol’s continued legacy. The fellowship enables PhD students and postdoctoral fellows performing research as part of a Brain Repair Program team to attend major international conferences, symposia or training courses outside of Canada. This is consistent with Dr. van Tol’s belief in the importance of international experiences.

PUBLIC AWARENESS AND ADVOCACY

Roundtable Report

The Public Policy Forum prepared a report of the four roundtable sessions that brought together key stakeholders in neuroscience, as well as policy-decision-makers and elected officials, to discuss how best to create the public policy framework needed to support research into neurological and psychiatric diseases and their impact. Prior to finalizing the report, the Public Policy Forum conducted a series of individual interviews with government officials and policy experts, in order to solicit their reactions to the findings and further refine the recommendations.

The report highlights the key points that emerged, and recommendations about how the coalition would be most effective in disseminating common messages to governments and the general public. The meetings were very positive: the overwhelming majority agreed that neuroscience stakeholder groups would have greater impact by approaching our target audiences as “one voice” with our messages about the prevalence and impact of brain and nervous system disorders and the need to increase neuroscience research funding. They also expressed strong support for NeuroScience Canada leading this effort. This was a major step forward, indicating that there is a willingness to work as a coalition, with a shared goal—though the form of this coalition is still to be defined.

The final report is now available on our website: http://www.neurosciencecanada.ca/en/Roundtable_Discussions

Upcoming national summit of neuroscience stakeholders

One of the key recommendations of the roundtable report is to hold a national summit at which neuroscience stakeholder groups will be convened. This will be an opportunity to discuss the key findings and recommendations contained in the Public Policy Forum roundtable report, and to further pursue the discussion about the proposed coalition of neuroscience stakeholder groups and, if there is sufficient support for moving the coalition forward, decide next steps. The summit will take place December 12 in Toronto. A report of highlights of the meeting will be provided in the next issue of NeuroEcho.

SCIENTIST PROFILE

Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau

Dr. Louis-Eric Trudeau is an associate professor in the department of pharmacology of the Université de Montréal. His research project, Mitochondrial dysfunction and neuronal demise: Insights provided by Parkinson’s disease genes, is funded by our Brain Repair Program. We met with him in his office where he gave us an overview of his work..

1. What influenced you to pursue a career in science?

I don’t know if all scientists feel the same way but I’ve always had a passion for science. As a child, I loved to do experiments in the basement with chemistry kits that my parents bought for me. In fact, when I began my studies, I wanted to become a chemist.

2. You did your master’s degree in France and a postdoctoral fellowship in the United States. Why did you decide to establish your lab in Montreal instead of outside Canada?

Canada is one of the best places in the world to do research in the field of neuroscience. And there is a concentration of excellent neuroscience researchers in Montreal. The Université de Montréal gave me the opportunity to develop my field of research – synaptic transmission – so it made sense to settle down here. Furthermore, I wanted my children to grow up in a safe, multicultural and bilingual environment with French as the main language of education.

 3. What do you like most about your work?

I love all aspects of my work; I wake up looking forward to getting to work! Every day is different—which is really stimulating. I feel like I’m still in school because I’m constantly learning.

4. What are some of your other interests?

I am an outdoor enthusiast. I do a lot of biking in the summer, and in the winter, I cross-country ski.

5. What contemporary scientific issue are you most concerned about?

I’m fascinated by the link between physical activity and health. We all know that it is important to exercise and eat right to stay healthy, but what is the scientific basis for this? If we knew more about the link, I believe that we could develop better programs to prevent disease.

6. What are some possible applications of your research?

I’m interested in dopamine-producing neurons. These cells are pathologically relevant to many diseases such as schizophrenia, attention-deficit disorder and Parkinson’s disease. Therefore, even though my work to date has mostly focused on the basic end of the research process, the results could very well lead to discoveries that will contribute to developing treatments for these diseases.

7. There are some ethical issues surrounding neuroscience research – one example being embryonic stem cell research. Have there been any other ethical issues that have arisen with regards to your research and if so, how did you address them?

The main ethical issue I face is the use of animals for research. I need to use transgenic mice (genetically modified) for my research. Before I use these mice, I need approval from the institutional animal care Committee, which will ensure that I follow all of the ethical guidelines and policies put in place by the university. And of course, we try to use the fewest animals possible, and we respect the standards of animal treatment that have been established, in order to avoid causing undue suffering.

8. What has NSC’s grant enabled you to do that would not have been possible otherwise? How is this grant different from other types of funding opportunities?

This grant is different because of its scope. By funding projects that bring together researchers from many different disciplines and institutions, NSC has allowed me to build a team that includes specialists in the molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases, in genetics of neuronal development, and in mitochondrial biology--from the University of Ottawa, from the Montreal Neurological Institute, and from the Université de Montréal. The grant has enabled me to formalize collaborations with these other laboratories; without the funding, these collaborations—and their contributions to science—would have been much more limited. Even our students and postdoctoral trainees are benefiting, by having the opportunity to train in high profile labs run by the institutions involved in the project. The grant will also allow us to hire several technicians and young researchers, giving them the opportunity to participate in an exciting and large-scale research program. Finally, the grant will enable our team to undertake our research in a more systematic and focused manner – as opposed to sporadic collaborations – which will accelerate the pace of discovery.

If you have any comments or questions about the content of this issue, please contact us.