BIV Magazines: LifeSciences 2008

Bringing together some of B.C.’s brightest minds, the Brain Research Centre is unravelling the mysteries of the mind and helping find cures for damaging ailments

By Curt Cherewayko

When tallying the wealth of brain power that converges at the Brain Research Centre, it’s difficult to accept that brain drain is an issue in Canada.

The centre, a 50,000-square-foot research space operated by the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, strives to cure some of society’s most damaging brain afflictions.

The impact of mental illness on society is even greater than that of cancer and of heart-related ailments. Stroke is the leading cause of disability in Canada today and the country’s third leading cause of death. Max Cynader, director of the Brain Research Centre’s since its inception in 1997, noted that 50% of Canadians will experience at the very least the minimal effects of Alzheimer’s by age 85.

Depression, he said, is monetarily the costliest illness in Canada today.

“All those things are within the province of the Brain Research Centre, and the reason for that is because they are all diseases that affect the brain,” said Cynader. He described the Brain Research Centre as the hub facility in a hub-and-spoke network: a place where members of its affiliated research and drug development entities can converge and share research and ideas. “Not only do you get revolutionary discoveries … but you also get patents, spinoff companies and translation of research results.”

The centre’s spokes include the affiliated teaching hospitals and roughly 20 existing companies throughout B.C. and beyond, which, if not direct spin-offs of the centre, refer to its research to advance drug development programs.

At one level, the centre’s greatest feat is in gathering under one roof talent that includes 30 Canada research chairs, recognized by the federal government as the nation’s most accomplished and promising minds, as well as 190 principal investigators that represent 20 university departments and six faculties.

“We have proven that if you put together a collection of very talented people and surround them with world class facilities, and create an environment of entrepreneurial dynamism, that you get results,” said Cynader.

With tongue firmly in cheek, he added: “Universities are places where society keeps its most dangerous people prisoners during peace time.”

Cynader has co-founded two companies himself, based on research conducted at the centre. Neurovir Therapeutics drew on gene therapy research to develop new treatments for brain tumours. The company was eventually sold to a German biotech firm for US$90 million. On the heels of Neurovir’s success, Cynader co-founded Wavemakers, which developed software algorithms that mimicked the mechanics of the ear to selectively amplify or dampen certain sounds. The company grew to about 35 employees before being acquired by Harmon Kardon, maker of audio and video technologies, which uses Wavemakers’ technology in General Motors’ OnStar system to isolate human speech from other noises prevalent while driving.

The protection of intellectual property is critical in the biotech industry. Researchers and drug companies often cling tightly to the secrets of their intellectual property as they develop their technologies.

The Brain Research Centre, however, is concerned with pre-competitive research. Thus, its findings can be referenced by neuroscientists and drug companies to further their own research and drug development.

“A vibrant biotech sector emerges from the universities by having a collegial atmosphere among people with different capabilities who have things to offer each other,” said Cynader.

Terrance Snutch, co-founder of Neuromed Pharmaceuticals, discovered the N-type calcium channel, which allows nerve cells in the spinal cord – specifically those associated with pain – to communicate with each other.

Best described as a joint spinoff of the Michael Smith Foundation and of members of the Brain Research Centre, Neuromed is developing compounds that block the N-type calcium channel to alleviate pain, particularly in chronic pain sufferers.

“One of the biggest parts of all in the drug development path is validating the target that you are working on,” said Snutch, who as well as being a member of the Brain Research Centre, is a professor at the Michael Smith Laboratories and at the departments of zoology and psychiatry in Simon Fraser University.

“What you really need is to be surrounded by scientific experts that provide you with not only the access to facilities … but the ideas and the atmosphere for helping you show that a particular gene target is actually going to make a good drug target.”

In 2006, Neuromed licensed its lead compound to Merck for an initial payment of $25 million, with up to an additional $450 million in milestone payments. “Neuromed’s working on a lot more things than it would otherwise have been because of all of these connections to the Brain Research Centre,” said Snutch.

Because of a collegial maxim that guides research at the centre, its members can use Snutch’s research to develop treatments in other areas. Building on Snutch’s research, Anthony Philips, a member of the Brain Research Centre and the director of UBC’s Institute for Mental Health, has identified the importance the N-type calcium channel has in alcohol and amphetamine addictions.

As an adviser and director of Allon Therapeutics, Phillips guides the company thru the mid-stage development of a number of drug indications for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.

“For a little company to have three drugs in Phase 2 clinical trials for three different indications, that’s big time.”

The centre’s influence spans further than B.C.’s borders. One of its members, Neil Cashman, is a Canada research chair designate and co-founder of Amorfix Life Sciences, a Mississauga company focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mad cow disease and its human variant, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, as well as degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The Brain Research Centre is built around six pillars of research: neurodegeneration (Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS), multiple sclerosis, mental health and addictions, stroke, neurotrauma and vision.

Its research is underpinned by a determination to learn how and why particular brain cells die, and how this might be prevented, and to determine the potential for neural regeneration of cells that have been lost due to disease or injury.

“This is the discovery research that leads to the ideas that eventually go on to form the intellectual property that is the core of a company,” said Phillips.

This March, the provincial government put $25 million towards a new patient-focused facility, the Centre for Brain Health, also located at Vancouver Coastal Health’s UBC Hospital site, which will combine patient care with the clinical research that occurs at the Brain Research Centre.

Cynader is appreciative of the province’s investment, but believes “there is not enough funding for curiosity driven research” where there may not be an immediate objective, but where significant discoveries are often revealed down the road. •

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