Bringing “One Brain” research to market for better brain health 

By Alison Palmer, Evaluation and Special Projects Lead 

Brain Canada-funded platform enables new technology for drug discovery, to address a wide range of brain diseases and disorders from epilepsy and autism, to brain tumors to ALS 

How it started 

A decade ago, Dr. Deboarh Kurrasch at the University of Calgary received a $2.7 million Brain Canada Platform Support Grant to pursue a bold idea for accelerating drug discovery for neurological disorders. That funding resulted in the creation of two companies, an entire patent family, and an effective means to discover new drugs that improve brain health. 

Through this signature Brain Canada program, Dr. Kurrasch developed and patented a technology called MitoREAD for revealing new drug targets for brain diseases. She subsequently launched a spin-off company called Path Therapeutics to license that technology, secured an additional $5 million in funding and hired eight staff to apply the technology in identifying and validating new drug targets.  

“Brain Canada started it all. Unequivocally – getting that grant launched us,” says Dr. Kurrasch. “It was transformative.” 

Now, after a series of pivots and lessons learned, Dr. Kurrasch is in active discussions with pharma to partner, or perhaps acquire, her second spin-off company, Stream Neuroscience. This company is developing a new drug that binds one of the targets identified using MitoREAD. To date, they’ve filed patents for this therapy, which blocks epileptic seizures and improves cognitive function in animal models.  

The bold idea 

Dr. Kurrasch’s grant sought to test a novel concept – that mitochondria, which generate the energy that cells need to survive and function, could be harnessed to identify new drug targets for brain diseases. Neurons have millions of mitochondria, whereas most other cells in the body have only hundreds. As a result, mitochondria are critically important to neural health. Relatedly, mutations in mitochondria cause a wide range of brain diseases and disorders.  

With that in mind, Dr. Kurrasch posited that any normalization or improvement of mitochondrial function would cause a decrease in symptoms across a wide range of brain diseases and disorders serving as the basis for a screening readout that could reveal unexpected and druggable pathways. Her patented screening technology MitoREAD measures mitochondrial function as a cornerstone of their platform technology. Initially developed using zebrafish disease models, Dr. Kurrasch and her team are now testing mitochondrial function using brain organoids, which are grown in a lab from patients’ stem cells, as models.  

What they discovered 

“And what’s really interesting, which I didn’t expect, is that mitochondrial dysfunction is consistent across all brain diseases examined – nearly two dozen models to date. It’s not disease or disorder specific,” Dr. Kurrasch explains.  

“So, whether we’re talking about epilepsy or autism, brain tumors, ALS, schizophrenia – all of these demonstrated a disruption in mitochondrial function that is robust and reproducible. And when we apply first line therapies to models of these different neurological disorders, we’ve been able to show that the mitochondrial function stabilized. This is not because we’re applying drugs that target the mitochondria, but because these drugs made neurons function better, and the mitochondria reflected that.” 

For example, the current drug that Dr. Kurrasch and her team are developing with Stream Neuroscience is not only effective for decreasing seizures in a genetic model of epilepsy – it’s demonstrating improvements in cognition and reduced anxiety as well. This work illustrates the value of Brain Canada’s One Brain approach, where every discovery has the potential to have an impact across a spectrum of brain diseases and disorders, as well as on our understanding of brain functioning. It also illustrates the value of supporting platforms. 

“The One Brain approach supports a transition from symptom- and target-centric treatment approaches to those that can act globally to restore complex function in the brain,” explains Brain Canada President and CEO Dr. Viviane Poupon. “Looking at the brain as one system effectively magnifies the potential for impact.” 

Why platforms matter 

“It’s so important that Brain Canada continues to support platform development, there’s such a need for it,” Dr. Kurrasch explains. “There’s a paucity of places to get money for technology development in this country. There are many researchers across Canada who need this type of funding to advance their innovative ideas.” 

Brain Canada’s Platform Support Grants enable teams to develop cutting-edge resources and services for advancing brain science and share those resources via open science to research teams in Canada and around the world. What makes these grants so unique is their support for highly trained people who develop and maintain the critical resources, whether they be samples or datasets, technological tools or services. Platforms are recognized as important capacity-builders and an effective means to accelerate research and innovation.  

Dr. Kurrasch, who was raised in California and is well acquainted with the biotech industry, has received a series of honours for her entrepreneurial achievements. She recently received the Alberta Science and Technology Foundation Women in Innovation award and was included in the 2024 list Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100. Over the course of her career, she has secured more than $60 million in funding, published 73 papers and given 125 invited talks.  

In 2014, Dr. Deborah Kurrasch, PhD, received a $2.7 million grant from Brain Canada and the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute to support her platform entitled “A Novel Zebrafish-Based Platform for Anticonvulsant Drug Development” with co-investigators Drs. Jong Rho, Jeffrey Buchhalter, and Mary Connolly. Dr. Kurrasch is a Professor and Deputy Department Head of Medical Genetics at the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM), University of Calgary and a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Alberta Children’s Hospital Institute, and Owerko Centre at the CSM. She is also the CEO and co-founder of Stream Neurosciences.