The CNMD’s enviable roster of world-class investigators has steadily advanced new approaches for diagnosing, treating and seeking tomorrow’s cures for neuromuscular disorders – a broad range of medical conditions that get progressively worse over time and impair how muscles and nerves function. This is profoundly consequential work: Roughly 14 million people across the world are affected by neuromuscular diseases – including over 10,000 people in eastern Ontario alone.
With the CNMD’s influence and collaborative capacity expanding year after year, it’s no exaggeration to say it’s become a beacon of hope for many patients diagnosed with a wide range of neuromuscular diseases. These include devastating disorders currently considered incurable such as ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease), muscular dystrophy, and SMA (spinal muscular atrophy).
Over the last decade, the CNMD community has done remarkable work boosting impactful collaborations. Bench-to-bedside translational research has been ramped up. And multidisciplinary colleagues have accelerated the advancement of promising therapies into clinical trials.
As a result, the CNMD has forged a unique path in the neuromuscular field that effectively bridges clinical, translational and basic research.
On the evening of Nov. 25th, about 100 attendees gathered at the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine to celebrate the CNMD’s 25th anniversary and highlight the work of talented investigators, generous donors, and patient partners who know the tremendous challenges of living with neuromuscular diseases.
The Centre’s namesake is a late Faculty member, renowned surgeon and highly respected mentor. A pioneer in minimally invasive surgery and chief of surgery at The Ottawa Hospital from 2003 to 2013, Dr. Éric Poulin was diagnosed in 2011 with ALS, a disease that affects motor neurons throughout the body and robs patients of their ability to move, speak, swallow and, eventually, breathe. Dr. Poulin passed away in 2016. The CNMD was renamed in his memory in 2019.
Dr. Poulin’s widow, Madame Margo Brousseau, provided a $1M donation that has enabled the uOttawa institute to partner with ALS patients, make promising breakthroughs in research, expand partnerships and infrastructure, and shape the next generation of researchers.
The Centre’s beginnings
The CNMD was founded in 1999 by Dr. Bernard Jasmin and Dr. Rashmi Kothary, two early-career scientists at the Faculty of Medicine who saw the potential of starting a research institute in Ottawa devoted to advancing our understanding of neuromuscular development and disease, and to discover novel therapies to treat these disorders.
“Early on, it became quite apparent that this was a world-class research environment with world-class researchers.”
Dr. Bernard Jasmin, Dean of the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine
Now, two-and-a-half decades since the Centre’s launch, Ottawa boasts one of the highest concentrations of neuromuscular investigators in the world. It unites ambitious and talented researchers from the University of Ottawa, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, University of Ottawa Heart Institute, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), and the CHEO Research Institute.
It’s not by chance that this effort found fertile soil at the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine and the University of Ottawa Brain and Mind Research Institute (uOBMRI).
“Early on, it became quite apparent that this was a world-class research environment with world-class researchers,” Dr. Jasmin told attendees at the gathering to mark the CNMD’s 25th anniversary.
The founders have thrived alongside their creation. Dr. Jasmin is Dean of the uOttawa Faculty of Medicine and a researcher with a vigorous program focusing on various neuromuscular diseases and conditions such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and skeletal muscle atrophy. Dr. Kothary is Deputy Scientific Director and Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and a researcher whose busy lab is constantly assessing ways to alleviate the pathology of neuromuscular disorders.
Both Faculty of Medicine professors are deeply proud of what the Éric Poulin Centre for Neuromuscular Disease has become – and what it promises to achieve in the future.
“It’s been one success after another,” Dr. Kothary said of the Centre. “What I’m looking forward to is another 25 years, and we’ll be celebrating 50 years of the CNMD down the road.”
A decade of impressive growth
Since 2014, the CNMD has been superbly led by Dr. Jodi Warman-Chardon and Dr. Robin Parks, who were tasked with advancing the Centre and adding a clinical aspect. Mission achieved: It’s evolved dramatically during their decade-long tenure as co-directors.
The numbers partially tell the tale: The CNMD expanded from 12 scientists in 2014 to over 60 scientists and clinicians today.
“We now have one of the biggest groups of clinicians and scientists across the world in neuromuscular disease.”
Dr. Jodi Warman-Chardon (shown at right, standing next to Dr. Robin Parks, left)
“We now have one of the biggest groups of clinicians and scientists across the world in neuromuscular disease,” says Dr. Warman-Chardon, Associate Professor at the Faculty’s Department of Medicine & Cellular and Molecular Medicine (CMM) and Director of the Ottawa Neuromuscular Centre at The Ottawa Hospital.
Dr. Warman-Chardon stressed that Ottawa’s research community doesn’t just boast an impressive concentration of neuromuscular investigators – it’s also home to multiple heavy hitters with global reputations.
“Many of our researchers are world leaders in their research field,” she said.
This, in turn, attracts top-tier medical students who seek to further their training at master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral levels and develop into tomorrow’s up-and-coming neuromuscular investigators. The CNMD is bolstered by over 150 trainees and staff.
The best and brightest are rewarded. Trainees working on neuromuscular projects are supported with a merit-based scholarship program known as the “CNMD STAR Awards.” Each year, three of these scholarships of $10,000 each are distributed to the most deserving neuromuscular trainees, and two additional awards of $15,000 each support research in ALS or motor neuron disease.
The Centre has also benefited from fruitful internationalization efforts, primarily a joint neuromuscular research partnership between uOttawa and the Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 first signed in 2017. Joint workshops were held in 2019 and 2024, with NMD researchers from Ottawa traveling to the French city of Lyon for intensive workshops designed to build collaborations and establish next steps for exchanges.
Dr. Parks, Senior Scientist at OHRI and Professor at the Departments of Medicine and Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology (BMI), said that Ottawa’s global reputation as an NMD leader has strengthened due partly to the visibility of the Ottawa International Conference on Neuromuscular Disease & Biology. He says this conference series is now a “key neuromuscular meeting” and has become an annual opportunity to “showcase to the world what Ottawa has.”
Navigating the path forward
The CNMD’s new co-directors are two Canada Research Chairs: Dr. Hanns Lochmüller and Dr. Mireille Khacho. They see coming years as a truly galvanizing time for the field of neurodegenerative disease research, and believe the Centre’s broad community is poised to lead the way.
An internationally renowned neurologist and clinician-scientist who specializes in genetic neuromuscular disorders and rare disease, Dr. Lochmüller says Ottawa’s strengths in both basic and clinical research are unique when compared to other locale’s neuromuscular-focused centres. The CNMD’s finely calibrated environment is a boon for patients eager for more effective treatments – and hopefully cures.
“Our researchers can do very exciting stuff in the lab, in their models, and that work can then be translated into clinical trials and patient care for people with muscle diseases. Of course, that’s exciting for our university and for the science – but it’s likely even more exciting for our patients. After all, it’s our patients who benefit from this work,” says Dr. Lochmüller, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Neuromuscular Genomics and Health.
His thriving lab, which is based primarily at the CHEO Research Institute and regularly publishes in top-tier journals, is supported by a CIHR Foundation Grant on Precision Health for Neuromuscular Diseases and by a CIHR Network Grant (jointly funded by Muscular Dystrophy Canada) for NMD4C, a neuromuscular network for Canada.
Dr. Khacho, Canada Research Chair in Mitochondrial Dynamics and Regenerative Medicine, says she’s inspired by the exceptional way the CNMD bridges clinical, translational and basic research.
“It’s the sheer breadth of the research here – all the way from stem cell research and muscle regeneration, taking it all the way to exploring diseases and the degeneration of muscle. We’re not focused on just one aspect of neuromuscular research – it’s really capturing the whole breadth of it. I think that’s very unique,” says Dr. Khacho, Associate Professor in the BMI Department who also serves as director of the Faculty’s Metabolics Core Facility.
Here’s to another 25 years of groundbreaking neuromuscular research!
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