Read about the latest updates happening at the EDDU
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Le Devoir has written an article on the EDDU, speaking on how Quebec research institutes partner with private industry to further research, such as the collaboration the EDDU has with the Montreal biotech company eNUVIO.
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Read the article here:
https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/science/807622/plateforme-trouver-traitements-neurologie
February 2024
Healthy Brains Healthy Lives has written a research spotlight article on the EDDU's organoid work!
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Brains on a Dish: Revolutionizing Parkinson’s Disease research with brain organoids
Image of cortical neurons
by Cecilia Rocha
Read the EDDU's quarterly newsletter to learn more about the latest events and achievements happening at the EDDU!
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Click here to read the Spring 2024 newsletter.
The EDDU has joined the G-CAN initiative! Thanks in part to funding from the Weston foundation and Van Berkom foundation, EDDU researchers are now helping to generate new mutant GBA iPSCs and developing new assays and therapeutics towards targeting GBA in Parkinson’s.
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To learn more, please visit: https://www.mcgill.ca/neuro/article/research/neurodegenerative-gene-focus-new-open-science-project
December 2023
The EDDU wrapped up a science-packed 2023 participating in the ALS/MND symposium in Basel, Swizterland! Congratulations to Mathilde, Vince, Sarah, Maria and Anna, for their poster presentations. The posters presented can be seen under Posters in Publications.
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November 2023
We were pleased to participate in the Canadian Network of Scientific Platforms Meeting! It was a great opportunity to present and discuss our work. Congratulations to Taylor Goldsmith, Wolfgang Reintsch, Andrea Krahn and Julien Sirois for their poster presentations, in collaboration with Nicolas Ferry, from the Clinical Biological Imaging and Genetic Repository (C-BIG Repository - Biobank). And a special congratulations to Andrea and Wolfgang for winning a best poster prize.
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September 2023
We are very happy to share that Marie-France Dorion's paper entitled "MerTK is a mediator of alpha-synuclein fibril uptake by human microglia" has just been published in Brain.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this paper!
Click on the link to access the publication: https://lnkd.in/eakD96E3
September 2023
Watch the EDDU's latest video "Open Science with Guada and Maria" to discover how the lab builds collaborations around the world to advance research on stem cells and brain disorders.
Meet Guada, a PhD student at Dr. Nicolas Unsain's lab, in Argentina, who worked with our lab's PhD student Maria, on characterizing membrane-associated periodic skeleton (MPS) in different iPSC-derived cells.
 Click the following link for the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSLUH9W_obk
August 2023
The Neuro’s EDDU is pleased to share our updated protocol for generating dopaminergic neurons from iPSCs through the use of a Microfabricated Disk. 
You can access the protocol here: https://zenodo.org/record/8256637
Image of an iPSC-derived microglia
by Marie-France Dorion
Read the EDDU's monthly newsletter to learn more about the latest events and achievements happening at the EDDU!
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Click here to read the August 2023 newsletter.
The Neuro-CERVO Alliance for Drug Discovery (NCADD) is pleased to share its partnership with AI company Simmunome to better understand mechanisms of neurological disease and accelerate drug development. The Neuro’s EDDU joined the newly established NCADD initiative in April, and since then have worked collectively towards the initiative’s goal of catalyzing public-private collaborations in Quebec’s life sciences sector.
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To this effect, NCADD’s partnership with Montreal-based private company Simmunome will employ their AI expertise to untangle biological pathways and biomarkers of neurological and psychiatric disorders, working towards potential therapeutic targets for these devastating conditions.
The Neuro’s EDDU is proud to share that Carol Chen, Research Assistant at the Early Drug Discovery Unit, has been awarded the 2023 Champion Award for Research Staff, alongside Claire Magnussen, Nikhil Bhagwat, and Samir Das. This award is a part of The Neuro Open Science Internal Awards, supported by Tanenbaum Open Science Institute to recognize researchers, staff, graduate and undergraduate students at The Neuro who have shown leadership and creativity in Open Science, inspiring peers and fostering a community of Open Science practice. Congratulations to all the awardees on this well deserved recognition of your work and commitment to Open Science!
The Neuro’s EDDU is proud to share that Thomas
Durcan, the Director of the EDDU, is co-principal
investigator of the new testing platform TRIDENT. In
a partnership between McGill University and
Western University, TRIDENT strives to identify
promising therapeutics against neurodegenerative
diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s earlier,
redirecting efforts and funding to the most promising
therapeutics. The New Frontiers in Research Fund’s
transformation stream has granted TRIDENT $24
million over six years.
Through advanced testing models, and a unique
focus on cognition, the platform will help bring drugs
with the most therapeutic potential to market and
assist researchers to assess whether these drugs
deliver the health outcomes anticipated.
Image of an iPSC-derived gut organoid
by Faïza Benaliouad
Read the EDDU's monthly newsletter to learn more about the latest events and achievements happening at the EDDU!
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Click here to read the May 2023 newsletter.
The Neuro’s EDDU is proud to be part of the Neuro-CERVO Alliance for Drug Discovery in Brain Diseases (NCADD) initiative. NCADD’s vision is to embrace patients’ heterogeneity to develop effective treatment to neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Through a unique unbiased scientific approach, combining deep patients’ characterization and artificial intelligence, our mission is to address major challenges in the neuroscience field such as finding biomarkers for neurological disorders, enabling drug target discovery, and facilitating the development of personalized therapies. NCADD’s core objective is to be a catalyst for public-private collaborations and for growth of the life science sector in Quebec.
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To learn more, go to: https://www.neuro-cervo.org/ ​
We are happy to announce our next virtual iPSC workshop which will take place on June 21st and 22nd. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about working with human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) and how they can be differentiated into neuronal cell types.
The application deadline is June 2nd.
To register for the workshop, go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LDJ59Z8.
Please note that the completion of the on-demand neural induction course is a prerequisite to attending this course if accepted. The link to register for this course is https://www.stemcell.com/forms/neural-induction-on-demand-training.html
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April 2023
March 2023
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