Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease-related research in Ottawa is currently organized around the Parkinson Research Consortium (PRC), which has made great strides in basic and preclinical research since its inception in 2004. Consortium researchers come together from multiple Ottawa institutions to explore and understand the genetic factors and cell biological processes that contribute to Parkinson's disease.

Thanks to the generous support of our community, the Parkinson Research Consortium (PRC) has made a meaningful and lasting impact on the future of Parkinson’s disease research by...

• Investing in the next generation of researchers through the funding 28 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows over the past 5 years.
• Enabling researchers and clinicians to make significant scientific progress and attract large grants by providing seed funding for novel research projects in Parkinson’s disease.
• Igniting bold, innovative ideas in Parkinson’s disease research through the provision of matching funds to multidisciplinary research teams

Recent Milestones Achieved with Support from the PRC

• Publication of Canada's first Parkinson's care guideline and its revision in 2019.
• Development of an Integrated Parkinson's Care Network driven by patients.
• Development of a prediction tool model for Parkinson's disease.
• Development of a simplified smell test.
• Development of mouse models that mimic different forms of Parkinson's disease
• Participation and leadership in new drug treatment trials for PD
• Continuous support of our next generation of young researchers
• We are excited to highlight the PRC’s achievements of the past few years.

We are extremely grateful to our contributors and supporters!

Named fellowships include:

• Shelby Hayter Research Fellowship
• Larry Haffner Research Fellowship
• Bonnie & Don Poole Parkinson’s Research Fellowship
• Francis Mathew Memorial Fellowship
• The Michael Bell and family Foundation Fellowship

Our Parkinson Research Consortium Fellowship Awardees 2025

Shelby Hayter Fellowship (year 2 of 2)

Awarded to: Emma Green

Title: “Testing the Contribution of Gut-Expressed Alpha-Synuclein to the Pathogenesis of Parkinson’s Disease” 

Mentor: Dr. Max Rousseaux

Larry Haffner Fellowship (year 2 of 2)

Awarded to: Nazia Hassan

Title: “Investigating a Redox-Protective Role of Parkin Downstream of Dopamine Stress in an In-Vitro Cell Model” Mentor: Dr. Michael Schlossmacher

Bonnie & Don Poole Parkinson’s Research Fellowship

Awarded to: Zeinab Hashemifard

Title: “Automated Tractography-Guided Localization of the Ventral Intermediate Nucleus for Precision Deep Brain Stimulation” Mentor: Dr. Adam Sachs

Francis Mathew Memorial Fellowship

Awarded to: Karan Thakur

Title: “Exploring Parkinson’s-linked Lrrk2’s modulation of a nasally acquired RNA virus infection” Mentor: Dr. Michael Schlossmacher

The Michael Bell and family Foundation Fellowship

Awarded to: Kate Harris

Title: “Impact of an aSyn-binding aptamer on neuropathological and behavioural outcomes of Parkinson’s disease” Mentor: Dr. Matt Holahan

Early raphe nucleus pathology and depression with a-syn seeding: A novel approach to targeting mTOR for prodromal Parkinsonism.

Co-applicants

• Dr. Shawn Hayley (Principal Applicant) – Dept. of Neuroscience Carleton University
• Dr. Paul Albert – Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, uOttawa
• Dr Faranak Vahid-Ansari- Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, uOttawa
• Dr. Baptiste Lacoste- Dept. of Cellular and Molecular Med, uOttawa (TEM Core)
• Dr. Hongyu Sun- Dept. of Neuroscience, Carleton University
• Dr. Nafissa Ismail- Dept. of Psychology, uOttawa
• Dr. Matthew Holahan- Dept. of Neuroscience, Carleton University
• Dr. Kyle Biggar- Dept. of Biology, Carleton University

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is not only associated with motor symptoms, but also non-motor symptoms. Depression is one of the most prevalent, debilitating and it is difficult to treat and occurs much earlier than motor disability. We developed a PD animal model that captures early depressive symptoms (and later motor impairment) which we propose is useful for modeling the early stages of PD and the development of biomarkers. In this grant, we propose to assess the role of a brain region, called the raphe, as a key area that is involved in early-stage PD. In particular, we will study how the pathological fibril form of the protein, a-synuclein, damages the raphe causing the progression of symptoms from depression to motor disability. We believe that targeting the mTOR system (which controls “garbage” systems in the brain) in the raphe will have therapeutic potential and block the a-synuclein damage and halt disease progression.

CoMANAGE-PD: Connected Care for Parkinson disease – development and evaluation of a care pathway in the primary care settings

Co-applicants

• Tiago A. Mestre (Principal Applicant),Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Center, The Ottawa Hospital, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa
• Scientist, The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
• Sylvie Grosjean (Principal Co-Applicant - Co-design), Professor, School of Communication, University of Ottawa
• Sathya Karunananthan (Principal Co-Applicant - eConsult/Clinical Epidemiology), Early Career Researcher, Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, University of Ottawa, Investigator, Bruyère Research Institute
• Clare Liddy (Co-Applicant – eConsult creator/Family Medicine), Professor and Chair, Department of Family Medicine, University of Ottawa
• David Grimes (Co-Applicant), Director, Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Center, The Ottawa Hospital
• Emily Evans (Collaborator), iCARE-PD nurse, Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Center, The Ottawa Hospital
• Pat Evans (Collaborator), Person with lived experience, Parkinson disease advocate
• Susan Roberts (Collaborator), Perth Family Health Team

There are about 100,000 aging Canadians living with Parkinson disease (PwP) today. The healthcare system is falling behind: (a) specialist care is delayed for diagnosis and support of all PwP, (b) knowledge about management is often limited to specialty centres, and (c) health services access is fragmented. Primary/community providers are not usually involved in care delivery and defer to PD specialists. Together with the Perth Family Health Unit care providers and PwP, we propose to co-develop, implement and conduct a pilot evaluation of a pathway for a care continuum between the community and a PD specialty center using more efficient communication and sharing of care knowledge for PD, as well as supporting patient empowerment. This is CoMANAGE-PD.

The CoMANAGE-PD project is the first step for a novel model of empowerment of community care for PD and provides strong evidence that can be used to spread our innovation across Ontario and Canada.

Detection of Parkinson’s with 12 Questions, 8 Scents and Blood Pressure Results

Co-applicants

• Michael G. Schlossmacher, MD (Principal Applicant), The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa Brain & Mind Research Institute)
• Juan Li, PhD (Co-Applicant, Early Career Researcher, Member of EDI Group, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute)
• Andrew Seely, MD, PhD (Co-Applicant, Departments of Surgery and Critical Care, The Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine)
• Sarah Jane Batten, MD (Person with Lived Experience and Retired Family Doctor)
• Joseph Saade, MD (Collaborator, Neurologist at Hull Hospital, Gatineau, QC.)
• Douglas Manuel, MD, MSc (Co-Applicant, Primary Care Physician, Methodologist, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine)

Access to specialists remains a challenge in Canada. Delaying the diagnosis of Parkinson disease (PD) worsens disability. We recently developed a simple-to-use tool to identify Parkinson’s patients, called “PREDIGT2.0”. Our team’s goal is to enable non-experts to identify PD. PREDIGT2.0 includes an abbreviated questionnaire and simplified smell test. In work funded by the PRC, PREDIGT2.0 differentiated PD patients from healthy controls with 97% accuracy, and separated PD from other brain conditions (e.g., dementia) with 79% accuracy. We wish to improve the important separation of PD from other diseases by adding an easy-to-obtain biomarker to PREDIGT2.0 that is relatively specific for PD. Reductions in blood pressure when standing up and decreased heart rate variability occur frequently in PD. We hypothesize that adding these variables will improve PD’s differentiation from other diseases (”PREDIGT3.0”). We will test this in Ottawa to provide evidence that Parkinson’s can be diagnosed ahead of formal neurological assessment.