McGill researchers win Brain Canada’s Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research Award
Jérôme Fortin, Paul Masset, and Simon Thebault have received the Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research Award from Brain Canada for their research in brain cognition, brain cancer, and neurological disabilities. The McGill researchers are among 22 successful applicants from across the country. They will each receive $100,000 in research funding distributed over a period of two years. Launched in 2019, the Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research Program gives emerging brain researchers the opportunity to accelerate novel and transformative neural research, fueling progress in nervous system function, dysfunction and health impacts. Jérôme Fortin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Principal Investigator at the Montreal Neurological Institute, studies how brain cancers begin, grow, and can be more effectively treated, with a focus on diffuse gliomas, the most common malignant brain tumors. Current treatments can extend survival but often cause serious side effects and rarely achieve cures. With new funding, Fortin’s team will examine why only some patients respond well to vorasidenib, a recently approved drug from a promising new class of therapies called isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) inhibitors, which target tumors carrying a specific genetic mutation. Their work aims to guide the development of more effective treatments and to identify which patients are most likely to benefit from IDH inhibitors. Paul Masset, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Associate Academic Member at Mila - Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, develops new ways to understand how dopamine shapes learning and decision-making in the brain. His team will study how learning signals from dopamine neurons relates to the brain’s sense of value and confidence, key ingredients in how we make choices. Despite major advances in neuroscience, uncovering the neural circuits behind complex behaviors remains challenging, given that such behaviors are difficult to capture in a laboratory environment. To address this, Masset’s team will develop new behavioral paradigms in rodents and computational tools to investigate complex cognitive computations are distributed across brain areas and neuron types. Their work aims to shed light on the neural basis of confidence and provide methods that can be widely applied across the neuroscience community. Simon Thebault, Assistant Professor, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, and Attending Physician, Montreal Neurological Institute and McGill University Health Centre, specializes in neuroimmunology and multiple sclerosis (MS), the most common cause of non-traumatic neurological disability. With new funding, he will focus on paramagnetic rim lesions (PRLs)—MRI-detectable lesions in the brain that signal chronic inflammation and disease progression, and do not respond to existing therapies. Why some lesions evolve into PRLs while others do not remains unclear, and so understanding this process could help predict and prevent MS progression. Thebault's team will investigate how immune cells in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid influence PRL formation and identify which PRL-related immune cells drive persistent inflammation. This research can improve the ability to better predict disease progression and guide earlier and more targeted treatments, improving long-term outcomes for people living with MS.
