Brain tumours are highly variable between patients, diverse within a patient, change over time, evade the immune system, quickly become resistant to front-line therapy, and often recur. The science is fascinating, the need is urgent, and researchers across fields and methodologies are using new methods and technologies to try to crack this exceptional problem.
When cells in our brain break from the tight control that weaves this complex structure together, they can form a tumour. Across tissue types in the body, we’ve come a long way in advances to treat various cancers. But the complex milieu of the brain poses a unique challenge, and requires a unique lens that brings together new technologies grounded in a fundamental biological understanding of the brain and brain tumours. These tumours are highly variable between patients, diverse within a patient, change over time, evade the immune system, quickly become resistant to front-line therapy, and often recur. Despite decades of efforts, no reliable cure for these glioma brain tumours - including glioblastoma - exists today. These are the most common malignant brain tumours, with the worst prognosis, and they continue to be one of medicine's most stubborn challenges. The science is fascinating, the need is urgent, and researchers across fields and methodologies are using new methods and technologies to try to crack this exceptional problem.
Featured guests:
Hong Han, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University.
Jerome Fortin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University.
Louis Gagnon, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Université Laval and a Principal Investigator at the CERVO Brain Research Centre.
Xian Wang, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at Queen’s University.
This work is supported by the Hewitt Foundation and the Alvin Segal Family Foundation.
Dr. Xian Wang 00:00
[theme music] Every time I learn more, I read more about glioblastoma, the less I feel like I know about glioblastoma. Every time I chat and exchange ideas with GBM researchers in our community, I think it’s a collective agreement that we are feeling like we need all to work together addressing the same disease from all different angles. And I feel lucky in this community, that everyone is super supportive and we are all trying to build a collective knowledge about this disease to understand it better. And maybe from the new knowledge, we are able to propose some of the new treatments to target it better.
Fiona 00:56
This is Bold Minds: Future Leaders in Canadian Brain Research. I’m your host Fiona Sanderson. I work at Brain Canada, where our mission is to bring together funders and researchers to enable health innovations for Canadians. The Future Leaders program is made possible thanks to an anchor gift from the Azrieli Foundation and matched by Brain Canada through the Canada Brain Research Fund. Come along with me as we journey into the bold minds and labs of researchers who are redefining our understanding of the brain. [music ends]
[rousing music] This season of Bold Minds, we’ve explored some of the many complexities of the brain, from development to aging and the journey in between. Today, we’re discussing some cutting-edge research on gliomas, including glioblastoma and others. These are the most common malignant brain tumors with the worst prognosis, and they continue to be one of medicine’s most stubborn challenges. These tumors are highly variable between patients, diverse within a patient, change over time, evade the immune system, quickly become resistant to frontline therapy, and often recur. Despite decades of efforts, no reliable cure exists today. Join me as we explore the work of four innovative researchers using methods and technologies to crack this problem. The science is fascinating and the need is urgent. So, let’s get into it. This is Bold Minds. [music ends]
Today, I’m joined by...
Dr. Hong Han 02:35
I’m Hong Han, assistant professor at McMaster University.
Fiona 02:40
Dr. Han and team are investigating the fundamental biological processes within glioblastoma cells, how they regulate, interpret, and use their genetic code. The goal is to uncover vulnerabilities in a tumor cell’s most fundamental functions that can be targeted by therapeutics.
[whooshing] I’m also joined by...
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 03:02
Hi. I’m Jérôme Fortin. I’m an assistant professor at McGill University.
Fiona 03:07
Dr. Fortin and his team study the initiation, progression, and treatment of brain tumors, specifically trying to understand how the most common malignant brain tumors, diffuse gliomas, evolve within a patient over time, and how that evolution shapes whether the tumor is affected by therapy, and how we can develop more effective treatments.
[whooshing] And I’m also joined by...
Dr. Louis Gagnon 03:31
Louis Gagnon. I’m an assistant professor in the department of radiology and nuclear medicine at Laval University and a principal investigator at the CERVO Brain Research Center in Québec City.
Fiona 03:43
Dr. Gagnon and team are working to optimize a neuroimaging technique called diffusion MRI to reliably find and characterize tumor cells that diffuse outward from a tumor mass and infiltrate healthy brain regions, evading surgical removal. The ultimate goal is to improve MRI accuracy for better detection of all tumor cells to improve treatment.
[whooshing] And I’m joined by...
Dr. Xian Wang 04:09
Xian Wang. I’m an assistant professor at Queen’s University.
Fiona 04:14
Dr. Wang and his team are looking at the mechanics of brain tumor cells, exploring and optimizing the use of tiny bubbles called acoustic microbubble microrobots that can be guided to the tumor using magnets and activated with sound to physically disrupt tumor cells, a method which, if successful, could become a completely new treatment option for glioblastoma.
Hong, Jérôme, Louis, Xian, welcome to Bold Minds.
Dr. Hong Han 04:41
Thanks Fiona.
Dr. Xian Wang 04:42
Thank you.
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 04:43
Nice to be here.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 04:43
Thanks.
[theme music]
Fiona 04:48
So, before I came to work at Brain Canada, I actually did many years of brain tumor research myself. So, the topic of this episode is particularly close to my heart, and I’m happy to be here with you today to discuss it on this, the season finale, of Bold Minds. So, let’s get right into it.
Hong, your work dives deep into the cells of brain tumors, deeper still actually into the nucleus within those cells, where you study how these cancer cells use their DNA. Because beyond gene mutations, there are many levels of regulation that a cell uses to carry out its specific functions. So, can you tell us about what you study and why that’s important in brain cancer?
Dr. Hong Han 05:28
Yeah, sure. The glioblastoma is a very complex and a dynamic disease. And important cancer questions for the field is to see, why does that [inaudible 05:39] of brain cancer always come back following therapies? So, my team is actually trying to understand the heightened machinery underlying the glioblastoma progression and treatment resistance, and in particular a pathway we study called alternative splicing. So, alternative splicing allows a single gene to generate different mRNA and a protein variant through their selective inclusion or exclusions of a different segments we call exons. Alternative splicing process thinks similar to the film editing, for example. So, you can imagine a gene it’s a very long and a raw film, so it’s including different footages. Before the movie is released, editors can edit and also combine different scenes, and the same scenes will be kept and the same can be removed. And from the same original footage, and the editor can create different versions or flavors of the movie. So, cells can do something similar, editing genetic messages to create different outcomes. The importance for alternative splicing is actually over 95% of human genes undergo alternative splicing. It impacts almost every aspect of a cancer’s proliferation, apoptosis, immune response. So, instead of avoiding the complexity, we can harness its potentials to develop novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets. So, in the context of a glioblastoma, it’s important to understand alternative splicing differs across different glioblastoma tumor states and also how alternative splicing changes as the disease progress, such as at the primary and the recurrent stage, and also how it shapes the interactions between tumors and its surrounding environment. So, we see GBM as an ecosystem, including different tumor cells, immune cells, brain, and other stroma cells. So, alternative splicing really represents an essential layer of gene regulation that can help understand how the entire GBM ecosystem evolves over time in this space and ultimately how we can better target it.
Fiona 08:13
So, if you find the sort of fundamental process that the tumor cell really depends on, the certain aspect of gene regulation, you can potentially focus efforts on targeting those things that it depends on. So, like exposing its Achilles heel. That’s a really great approach.
Jérôme Fortin, let’s zoom out a bit to look at what you study. Your work investigates this process of tumor evolution, so how a tumor actually changes within a patient over time, and what effect those changes have on trying to effectively and completely treat the cancer. So, tell us about what you work on.
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 08:48
Yeah. So, a big, big, big challenge in diffuse glioma has been trying to find ways to really effectively target and eradicate the tumor cells. And the reason for that challenge is because the tumors are very variable. Right? So, they vary between patients, but there’s also a lot of variability within the tumor, and that changes as the tumor grows. And so, in this way, the tumor is able to evade a lot of the treatments, the therapies that try to eliminate the bulk of what’s left, let’s say, after surgery. So, you will always have some surviving cells left behind that then become resistant to this therapy. So, you know, what you tried first doesn’t work anymore and it’s basically an endless battle, and probably ultimately contributes to the very poor prognosis for many of these cancers. We try, really, to understand what’s driving this evolution of the disease, how they get to evade therapy, and try maybe to find ways to tackle that heterogeneity. And, I mean, ultimately, the goal is to get at the root of the disease, but it’s very difficult to do that. I think that, as a field, we’re just starting to skim the surface a little bit of what’s going on there, so there’s a lot more to uncover.
Fiona 10:03
So, if a tumor evolves over time and ends up with maybe groups of cells that have an identity that are different from each other, what does this mean for treatment? So, would we end up treating the tumor with multiple things at the same time and we’re trying to sort of those things are? How do you get at that?
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 10:21
I mean, there’s a few ways that you could try at that. So, one way is to try to find what might be the root and go after that. That’s probably very challenging. You could also try to devise a series of treatments that could be used sequentially. The goal there would be to transform maybe this aggressive disease to something a little bit less aggressive that you might be able to manage over at least a longer period of time to kind of, like, improve the prognosis. It’s always nice to think of a cure, but, you know, I think we have to maybe think a little bit more incremental than that. And maybe a third way is to try to target things that are around the tumor. Right? Not the tumor cells themselves, but things that are around the tumor and that could affect the tumor in multiple ways. So, multiple types of cells, for example, in the tumor could be targeted at the same time with this type of approach.
Fiona 11:11
Okay. So, like, sort of trying to cut off the tumor support system, I guess.
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 11:15
Essentially, or use the support system as kind of, like, a way to attack the tumor, that’s kind of, like, the idea behind a lot of the immunotherapy that I think a lot of people have talked or heard about in many cancers. The—what we have currently that worked beautifully in some cancers don’t work at all in diffuse glioma. So, there’s still a lot to learn there as well.
Fiona 11:35
Yeah, absolutely. Louis, you’re a researcher and a clinician, and your clinical specialty is radiology or radiologist, and your research interest closely tied to that is trying to optimize a widely used neuroimaging tool, MRI, to be able to detect and identify tumor cells that infiltrate healthy tissue. So, let’s take a step back and can you explain to us why it’s important to find these cells and how you’re using MRI to do that?
Dr. Louis Gagnon 12:03
Yeah. So, my research centers on glioblastoma, which is a very aggressive disease. And in glioblastoma, the core of the tumor is enhancing on MRI, then it becomes really easy to delineate this tumor, and when the neurosurgeon will remove the tumor they will remove this portion of the tumor. There is also other tumor cells which we call infiltrative tumor cell, which are a little bit lower grade. They don’t produce this blood-brain barrier disruption, so there’s no enhancing, but they infiltrate the periphery of the tumor. And right now, this portion of the tumor is not resected surgically, basically because we cannot delineate this portion on the MRI. One of the property of the brain is that as opposed to other body organs is that you cannot remove as much as you want. Because the more you remove, larger the post-operative symptoms will be. If you remove brain region in a motor area, you’re going to cause paralysis and stuff like that. So, to remove some brain tissue, the neurosurgeon wants to be sure that it is actually cancer and there’s no other way to cure this specific tumor portion. The rationale is that because these non-enhancing tumor portions are a little bit lower grade, they might respond to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. But the thing is that glioblastoma is a very terrible disease, and although at some point the tumor cells are lower grade, they have the genetic potential to become high grade in a very short amount of time. So, if we leave this tumor portion there, they’re going to recur and become high grade in a very short amount of time. And there is some evidence that if you start removing these tumor portions, you know, blindly in the periphery of the tumor, it’s called supramarginal resection, we improve survival in those patients. But there’s only very few surgeons who are, you know, willing to remove blindly this tumor region. So, we hope that if we can better identify this region with MRI and delineate specifically, “Okay. Let’s not focus on the entire periphery but, you know, in front of this tumor there is a tiny portion here, one centimeter, that we strongly believe contains an infiltrated tumor cell. You might want to remove also this portion of the tumor,” we believe that it’s going to become more appealing to a neurosurgeon, and it’s going to improve the supramarginal resection on a routine clinical basis. And in order to do that, we can use MRI. Because the beauty with MRI is that you don’t have the resolution to image at the cellular level, you image a chunk of tissue which are really one millimeter by one millimeter. But one of the things is that with tumor cells, their nucleus is very big compared to standard or healthy brain cells. So, if you can target a sequence which measures the nucleus size or the nucleus density in the specific voxel, we hope that we’re going to be able to identify these regions of infiltrative disease and then guide the neurosurgeon to actually resect it.
Fiona 15:19
So, when you have glioblastoma, you see sort of these cells just ‘pepper’ around the tumor and further into normal brain regions, so there’s going to be pieces that the surgeon can remove [in the 15:31] supramarginal resection. What about the pieces that are still left behind? Is that something that we can then monitor using this type of MRI in order to catch if they start to expand over time?
Dr. Louis Gagnon 15:45
It’s a very good question, actually. Of course, if there is a chunk of tissue with multiple infiltrative cells, we have hope that we can detect these. But at some point, it’s going to be like individual cells, you know, moving around the entire brain, and the minimal concentration of these cells that we can detect right now, it depends on the strength of the magnet in the scanner. It depends on the amount of time you’re willing to image the patient to average and average and remove the noise. So, it’s a very good question. And I don’t think that the method we are working on will actually allow a neurosurgeon to remove all the disease and cure the disease, but the result of supramarginal resection are interesting. So, if you can give, like, three to four months of additional survival to a patient when the—you know, the overall survival is about fifteen months, then you end up, you know, giving twenty percent more survival time to the patient. So, we believe it is significant in this case. But when the disease is really diffused, I don’t think surgery will be the method of choice. It’s going to be like what Jérôme was saying, like immunotherapy or extensive systemic therapy that will target these specific cells.
Fiona 17:03
Yeah. I mean, I think if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that there’s not going to be one answer. So, the question, and it’s all sort of worth it, we’re all getting towards the same end there.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 17:13
Yeah.
Fiona 17:14
So, Xian, your work really zooms out to look at all the tumor cells in a brain as a sort of problem en masse and figure out a practical and mechanical way to destroy them using something called dual-actuated acoustic microbubble microrobots. So, I got to say, microrobots kind of sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, and I’m intrigued. So, can you explain to us, like, what are these microrobots? What are you doing with them?
Dr. Xian Wang 17:39
Thank you. We design those microrobots, or in other words, very small-scale robots that is safe to be introduced into brain tumor. And we use those small robots to understand the mechanical microenvironment of brain tumor and also to leverage the knowledge we learned from the mechanobiology to see whether we can use mechanical stimulation as a new way for applying treatment to glioblastoma. The design of those microrobots [usually 18:11] rely on magnetic fields similar to MRI and acoustic fields similar to ultrasound to see whether we can use some of those external fields to control something that’s within the brain. So, that’s the overall goal of the technology design.
Fiona 18:29
So, what is the micro? Is this something, like, microscopic that you would inject into a bloodstream? Like, how does it get in there? How does it get to the tumor?
Dr. Xian Wang 18:38
Yeah. The microrobots are the micro or nanoscaled materials that is controllable by external output [that we usually use with 18:48] either optical field, electrical field, magnetic field, acoustic field to control those microscale entities with target position for performing measurement, for applying stimulation and even for delivering drugs. For getting into their target areas, there are several approaches, and as you know there are quite a few challenges for getting into the brain. That is one of the biggest reason why we chose brain tumor as a target, because it’s traditionally known as the hard-to-reach area. Some areas may not be reachable by scalpel, as mentioned by Louis earlier, but [they are 19:25] microscopic structures that might have the potential to be reached by the tool that is in the similar scale. So, we’re designing those microscale materials controllable by external field, and then use that field to guide them through to the target region.
So far, our research is limited to direct injection into the tumor region and then see how we can control it to target tumor better, but there are ongoing research we’re working on right now to see how we can control them better within the blood flow and how we can control them to pass through blood-brain barrier. And there has already been promising results. I say there are souls from Sunnybrook hospitals where they control the acoustic stimulation and use the acoustic microbubble to open the BBB temporarily to help drug perfuse into the brain better.
Fiona 20:19
Okay. So, you can kind of use the ultrasound to shake up the blood-brain barrier, let these microrobots in, and then you’re actually using magnets outside of someone’s head to guide these microrobots to the tumor. Still sounds like sci-fi to me, but that’s very cool. [chuckles]
Dr. Xian Wang 20:38
Yes. Thank you. This concept has actually been deployed in several areas, but not in brain. There has been magnetic-driven navigation for small catheters. And you may know the capsule robot that deploy as endoscope—as an alternative to endoscope that get into the stomach, but those are larger scale in centimeter. But we’re hoping to design something even smaller and get it into more challenging areas in glioblastoma.
Fiona 21:07
That’s incredible. A real feat of engineering. And is this something that could be used to get at those infiltrative tumor cells that sort of sneak through the healthy brain tissue?
Dr. Xian Wang 21:18
That’s one of the goals for having the small robot. We’re trying to see the efficacy for targeting the small areas within the brain, and this is one side of the application of the small robot; to target it better. But at the same time, also I want to highlight, they could be deployed as a tool for understanding why those small margins are different than the bulk of the tumor and what are the mechanical microenvironments they’re situated in. So, they’re not merely a tool to target something [with a little 21:52] drug, but also as a tool for understanding the overall microenvironment that the tumor is situated in. So, Hong just mentioned, it is glioblastoma we see it as an ecosystem, and these tools that get into the tumor is putting the piece of the mechanical aspect of that ecosystem into the picture understanding, where is the tumor growing in the skull? There are increasing the stress or the compression overall on the tumor, and there are changed shear stress on the tumor. And how is that affecting tumor and how is that making the tumor more resistant to treatment? That’s also another goal this robot can help us understand.
Fiona 22:32
Wow! That’s really interesting. So, you’re all working on glioblastoma, and you’re all tackling sort of different angles just different approaches to defeating this disease. And that’s because, as we’ve already talked about, it’s so complex, so variable, ever changing. I kind of think of it as playing a game of chess against an expert opponent, so it’s not as simple as a single planned attack. The cancer fights back itself. It masks itself from the immune system. It hides amongst healthy cells. So, what do you think about that? How do we move forward and make real advances in therapies against such a seemingly formidable opponent?
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 23:10
I think maybe we have to think outside the box a little bit. I mean, I was just hearing Xian, you think outside the box with those microrobots. I think it’s new to me, but it sounds very interesting and very promising. Yeah. Probably we need some kind of paradigm shift to treat those tumors. I mean, I was giving the example of immunotherapies. You know, we’ve learned a lot about how they work and other cancers, and then, of course, they’ve been tried in glioblastoma, they don’t work at all. We have to look at this disease in the—with new lens, right? With a perspective that’s unique to that disease. And there’s a lot more to learn there and maybe we can use some of what we learn about other diseases or other aspects of biology, but also think that there’s probably going to be a lot of things that will be different or specific about glioblastoma.
Dr. Xian Wang 23:56
So, we know the genetic type in glioblastoma is very heterogeneous, very diverse types, and Hong may have more comments on that. So, if we target on one pathway, other pathways may just fuel the growth of the glioblastoma again and then making it extremely difficult to treat. And the mechanical aspects is—as a representative of the biophysical approach, is targeting on the cellular structures to disrupt the cell membrane. Disrupt the nuclear envelope to see whether that can just destroy the cellular structures of the cancer cells and not letting it develop the genetic therapy resistant to the drugs. So, hopefully, that is one approach that is possible for us to keep exploring. And in the meantime, the way that we work towards this direction is also relying on a lot of extensive collaboration with the cancer biologist, with clinicians, and with imaging experts to work together as a collective effort towards a treatment.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 24:59
And it’s also a very dynamic process. At the beginning of the tumor, it can be one dominant feature that the tumor is driven by, but as you start treatment the tumor can modify its genetic, its metabolism. It can be totally different at the end, like a couple of months later. So, understanding all these dynamics in time, it is essential in order to attack from some several sides at the same time.
Dr. Hong Han 25:31
I think I really agree with my colleagues here. It’s just I think glioblastoma is very complex and across different stages of the disease, and it can be very different tumors even from the same patient. And in order to understand a complex disease like glioblastoma, we need a team together. We need a collaboration to bring different expertise in order to re-understand and ultimately conquer GBM. I think it will be important to form a dynamic and evolving research ecosystem, so we have different expertise. Today, actually, here, Louis is the clinician scientist, and we’re also—like three of us, we are physics scientists, I think it’s important to bring this perspective together. And I think that through the different projects we’ve been working with, and especially [the 26:23] Brain Canada, like, to support out of a box approach and the high risk and the high return research, it’s very important for us as well. It gave us to build the collaborations and the interacting with expertise from different fields and to really bring the information.
Fiona 26:42
So, brain cancer and particularly the gliomas you all study are extremely aggressive, and once diagnosed tend to leave patients with a devastating short timeline. A lot of the advances and work being done are now enabled by generous donation from patients of, you know, tissues, cells, blood samples, data. So, can you speak to how this affects your research, the importance of patient-driven, patient-donated information?
Dr. Hong Han 27:11
I think the role, like, a patient partner [will allocate 27:15] has been very important in many cancer fields, including glioblastoma. At McMaster, actually, we have a unique rapid autopsy program led by Dr. Sheila Singh, and through the programs and our patients actually very generously donate their whole brain at the end stage of the disease. That actually did allow us to really understand different tumor regions and the surrounding brain regions to really understand the progression of this disease and to bring hope for other patients and their family. So, I think it’s with these samples it enables us to study the ecosystems of the GBM.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 28:01
That’s very interesting. In my field, one of the thing that is, you know, very hot at the moment is artificial intelligence. And in order to build artificial intelligence models that are reliable and easily deployable across multiple centers, you need a lot of data in order to train the—your model. Because if you train your model at a single institution, then when you’re going to apply this model at—you’re going to give this model to your colleague at another institution they’re going to try it and say, “Well, it’s not as good as you were mentioning in your paper.” The one thing that helps a lot is when people—when patients agree to share their imaging session with the research community in order for us to have, you know, a larger data set, and to share this data set, you know, online which makes it available for other people from other institutions to combine, you know, patients from multiple institutions and then to train big foundation models using multi-center data. And at that point of the model you train, and the tools you are developing are much more easily deployable across, you know, multiple institutions. For us, like, when the patients sign the form that the—all the imaging sessions can be shared with, you know, the research community, it’s really helpful. And I have to say that most patients that we treat agree to do that because for them it’s very important that all the things that they are going through will serve for a future patient to be treated more efficiently. So, they are very, very generous.
Dr. Xian Wang 29:30
Yeah. Patient sample is crucial for our research when developing new treatment as well. We want to make sure when we are proposing a new treatment or testing a new treatment, it will work for more patients. And having a patient sample coming from a good representation of the big demographics is important for us, especially for glioblastoma, which is known for developing therapy resistance. And also, as Hong and Louis mentioned, the patient samples a lot of times are attached with information on treatment history, on genetic analysis, and all of that will help us better understanding why or why not the treatment works or not work. This is one side of the patient sample. But in the meantime, I also want to mention collaborating with our patient partners is also very important for our research. Thinking about—outside of box but we are trained in the research environment traditionally built towards the brain tumor. But for patient partners coming from their unique expertise, when they give us suggestions [and 30:40] talking to us about—and commenting about our research directions or research areas, the comments they give us can sometimes be really out of box and be unique for us to explore.
Fiona 30:51
Of course. I mean, they’re the experts in their own conditions. Right? So, such an important voice.
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 30:57
Ultimately, the patients are really at the center of what we do, because we’re studying a disease, right? And patients are faced with this very life-changing situation, and many of them are fearless also and they’re willing to try and explore and helping themselves but also helping the next patients. And that takes a lot of courage to, for example, want to maybe try a new treatment or a new therapy, and I’ve—that’s quite admirable.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 31:24
I totally agree with what Jérôme was saying. You know sometimes as researchers we don’t think about all the side effects of—or all the pain that they are going through. And especially for glioblastoma the—you know, the fraction of patients that will refuse treatment and, you know, refuse at least surgery is—it’s not zero. It’s significant. So, when you think about that you say, “Okay. So, maybe there’s something that I’m not a patient so I don’t feel that, but for them it’s a game changer.” Like, if they have a certain, you know, amount of time that they can live, they want to decide what they want to do of this time. And sometimes I think that as a researcher, it’s hard to get into their feet and, you know, feel all the consequences of everything. We want to try for good reason to help them. We have to keep this, you know, whole patient picture and then put the patient at the center of all this research.
Fiona 32:26
Absolutely. Thank you, Hong, Jérôme, Xian, and Louis for chatting with me today. Thank you for choosing to study the hard questions, and thank you all for joining us for this season of Bold Minds.
[theme music]
Dr. Hong Han 32:38
Thanks so much, Fiona.
Dr. Xian Wang 32:40
Thank you.
Dr. Jérôme Fortin 32:41
Thanks.
Dr. Louis Gagnon 32:41
Thanks for having me.
Fiona 32:44
Bold Minds is a Brain Canada production with support from the Azrieli Foundation. Our executive producers are Jillian Donnelly and Kate Shingler. Our lead producer is Jess Schmidt, with editing by Morgane Chambrin. Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this episode, we’d appreciate it if you could send it to a friend. If you want to learn more about Brain Canada and our Future Leaders program, please visit our website at braincanada.ca. [music ends]