Researchers at McGill University are leading two major new Brain Canada-supported platforms to accelerate discovery and improve outcomes for patients living with neurological disorders, as announced today.

Associate Professor Jean-François Trempe (Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics) is leading the McGill Mass Spectrometry Platform for Neurobiology, which allows scientists to analyze thousands of proteins, lipids, and metabolites from a single sample. By layering these molecular insights, the platform will help researchers better understand how diseases such as Parkinson's disease, autism, and brain cancers begin and progress, opening the door to earlier diagnosis and more targeted treatments.

Professor Reza Sharif-Naeini (Department of Physiology) is leading McGill's NeuroAccess, the Canadian Platform for Human Nervous Tissue Research, which provides ethical, equitable access to living human nervous tissue donated through organ donation programs. By enabling research directly in human neurons, NeuroAccess tackles one of the biggest barriers in neuroscience: the gap between laboratory models and real patients. The platform is expected to dramatically speed drug discovery for chronic pain and neurodegenerative diseases while reducing costly clinical trial failures.

Together with NeuroVIP at The Neuro (Montreal Neurological Institute‑Hospital) and PRIME-RNA at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), these platforms represent a $8,926,500 investment in shared infrastructure designed to move discoveries out of the lab, benefit researchers across Canada, and lead to improved brain health.

The research platforms are supported by Brain Canada through the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative partnership between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada Foundation, with financial contributions from Health Canada, national and regional partners, and donors.