Celebrating the impact of Future Leaders seed funding 

By Alison Palmer, Evaluation and Special Projects Lead

For every $1 we spend in seed funding through the Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research program, Future Leaders will attract an additional $7.75 to build on their findings.

Since 2019, the Future Leaders program has supported 131 promising early career researchers with $100,000 each to pursue bold ideas, advance their research programs, and launch their careers. This seed funding has allowed Future Leaders to:

• Engage over 420 students, trainees and highly qualified personnel to advance research projects;
• Enroll more than 1,200 individuals as participants in the research;
• Establish 165 collaborations with other researchers, health care practitioners, and decision-makers;
• Generate a combined 117 peer-reviewed publications, the currency of research productivity, which have already been cited over 1,700 times, a testament to how their work is advancing the field;
• Attract $101.7 million in additional funding to continue their Brain Canada-funded research, including more than $39.7 million in complementary funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; and
• Make countless discoveries that are transforming our understanding of the brain and advancing solutions to its diseases and disorders.

“Brain Canada funding provided the essential seed support to launch my research program. Without Brain Canada’s investment, I would not have been able to generate the proof-of-concept and preliminary data required to successfully secure major grants.” 
– Prof. Ashlyn Swift-Gallant, Memorial University of Newfoundland 

Featured below are a few of many stories of Future Leaders’ research impact, made possible thanks to partners and donors, including an anchor gift from the Azrieli Foundation. 

From Trial and Error to Precision Therapy

For decades, deep brain stimulation (DBS) has helped patients with brain disorders, but clinicians have largely relied on trial and error to determine where to place electrodes and how to program stimulation.  

Research by Future Leader Luka Milosevic, Ph.D., is changing that.  

By recording brain activity directly during neurosurgery, Prof. Milosevic and his research team at the the Krembil Brain Institute, UHN showed that brain disorders such as Parkinson’s are not driven by a single malfunctioning brain region, but by abnormal communication across brain networks. They then identified measurable brain signals—biomarkers—that reveal how dysfunctional circuits respond to stimulation in real time. These discoveries provide clinicians with objective guidance for targeting and tuning DBS therapy, helping to transform deep brain stimulation from a one-size-fits-all treatment into a more precise, circuit-based therapy that improves outcomes for people with Parkinson’s disease and other neurological disorders.

Prof. Milosevic has obtained almost $1.3 million in additional funding to move his Brain Canada-funded work forward, including support for a clinical trial that will use the biomarkers identified to personalize treatment. His research has also produced new tools and analytical methods now used by other scientists, accelerating efforts to develop personalized neuromodulation therapies and next-generation brain stimulation technologies.  

“It never gets old. We get to press a button, the patient hears a beep, and suddenly their tremor stops, sometimes for the first time in decades. It’s incredibly rewarding.”
– Luka Milosevic, Ph.D.

The Impact of Gut Health on the Developing Brain 

Chronic inflammatory diseases that begin in childhood can affect far more than the body—they can also influence how the brain develops. Research led by Future Leader Annie Ciernia, Ph.D., is helping to understand these connections by uncovering how inflammation in the gut can shape brain maturation during critical stages in early life. 

Using a newly developed animal model of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), Prof. Ciernia and her research team at the University of British Columbia discovered that early-life gut inflammation disrupts communication between the microbiome, hormone systems, and the brain. These disruptions differed between males and females; in males, these changes were linked to altered sex hormone levels, delayed puberty, and differences in behaviour mirroring clinical observations in young boys with IBD.

At the centre of these effects are microglia, the brain’s immune cells, which respond to signals from the gut and help shape development of regions of the brain that regulate hormones and behaviour. Prof. Ciernia and her team showed that disruptions in this gut-brain signaling pathway can alter how microglia develop, with important differences between males and females. 

This work reframes IBD as not only a gastrointestinal disease, but one that can have lasting effects on neurodevelopment.  

As part of this work, the team developed an open-source computational toolkit to analyze microglial cell states at scale. They also developed a new pre-clinical model in which mice carry human microbiomes from IBD patients. Together, these advances provide powerful new tools to study how chronic inflammation affects brain health, laying the groundwork for therapies that address both the physical and neurological impacts of IBD. 

“This was a terrific program that launched a totally new direction for my lab. Without this support we would not have started to explore the gut-brain axis, which is now a major focus of my group.”
– Annie Ciernia, Ph.D. 

Uncovering a Hidden Driver of Multiple Sclerosis Progression 

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is typically understood as a disease where the immune system attacks myelin, the protective coating around nerve cells. But new research by Future Leader Prof. Jo Anne Stratton suggests there’s more to the story. 

Prof. Stratton and her team at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University are shining a light on a lesser-known cell type in the brain: ependymal cells, which line the spaces where brain fluid flows. Through her Future Leaders project, Prof. Stratton and her team discovered that cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from people with MS (MS-CSF) can disrupt how these cells function. For example, when exposed to MS-CSF, the tiny hair-like structures on ependymal cells, called cilia, stop beating. This matters because the cilia’s movements are essential for keeping fluid circulating properly in the brain, which maintains the brain’s ability to deliver nutrients and clear metabolic waste. Taking their investigations a step further, the team found that these changes to the ependymal cells are linked to behavioural effects similar to symptoms seen in MS, suggesting that disrupted fluid flow due to cilia defects may play a critical role in MS symptoms.

Prof. Stratton’s work is published in Brain and data related to the project is available via her open science website, so that other researchers can build on the findings. Prof. Stratton and her team are now investigating how some of the key toxic factors in MS-CSF damage ependymal cells, with the goal of informing new avenues for treatment. 

“While current treatments help reduce relapses, they often fail to stop the gradual worsening of MS. Our ultimate goal is to find ways to restore ependymal cells, protect brain function, and prevent the disease from progressing.” 
– Jo Anne Stratton, Ph.D. 

These are just three stories unfolding across Canada right now.

Meet the latest Future Leaders and explore the research they are bringing to life.