Grant: Project Grant

We are bioprinting next generation brain organoids (miniature brains) for screening drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD). The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates it takes $2.6 billion and 12 years for a pharmaceutical drug to go from discovery to market. The Alzheimer's Society of Canada estimated the cost of AD in 2016 at $10.4 billion as the disease affects 1.1 million Canadians. Better pre-clinical tools for predicting the effectiveness and toxicity of drugs would significantly lower the chance of drug failure during clinical trials, reducing the cost of drug development and decreasing the healthcare burden generated by neurodegenerative diseases like AD. Our teams consists of Dr. Willerth, an internationally recognized neural tissue engineer at the University of Victoria, Dr. Nygaard, an M.D./Ph.D. who runs the Alzheimer's clinic at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Katherine Elvira, Canada Research Chair and Michael Smith Scholar who is also an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Victoria, and two award winning biotechnology start-ups - Aspect Biosystems and Axolotl Biosciences. The project will use Aspect Biosystems' cutting edge 3D printing technology to generate miniature brains using stem cells taken from patients suffering from AD, validate these neural organoids as a tool for drug screening, and then evaluate potential drugs by examining their effect on the function of these engineered tissues.