The hardest thing for Richard is knowing one day he won't remember the people he loves.

When Richard first started forgetting things, he thought he was tired. He had been working long hours. But his wife knew different. She could see that things just weren’t right.

Richard was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

Every year in Canada, more than 25,000 people like Richard receive this devastating news. Alzheimer’s disease, like other progressive brain disorders has no cure. There are medications that aim to slow the progress of the condition. But advances in treatment have not progressed.

Your monthly support will fund ground-breaking advances such as investigation into both the understanding and treatment of brain disorders.

"There is an urgent need to develop new, effective, and safe therapies for Alzheimer's disease."

Dr. Nir Lipsman

Neurosurgeon, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
Scientist, Sunnybrook Research Institute

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Your investment can shape the future of health care.

With your support, you can help create a future that includes more precise, less invasive treatments for life-threatening diseases. Sunnybrook’s world-leading scientists are researching and developing new solutions to fight health problems like breast cancer, heart disease, stroke, brain disorders, and more.

• Breast cancer research that advances life-saving treatments: WaveCheck, an innovation in technology pioneered at Sunnybrook, can determine the effectiveness of a breast cancer patient’s chemotherapy in weeks, compared to the months that it has traditionally taken, is being tested in a clinical trial at Sunnybrook and other leading cancer centres in North America. By knowing early whether chemo is working, patients and their doctors can make important treatment decisions, such as trying another drug that may be more effective.


• Customizing cancer treatment: A cell imaging technique developed at Sunnybrook is showing promise to guide patient-specific treatment in cancer. It can test hundreds of drugs in many combinations in just a few days to determine in advance which strategy will work for patients—before they “try” what may or may not be effective. On the basis of successful lab studies, this work is moving into a first-in-human clinical trial for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, where treatment usually fails more than 50% of patients.


• Changing the course of heart disease: Roughly one-half of people diagnosed with heart failure will die within five years. It’s hard to know whose disease will advance. In a world’s first trial, Sunnybrook scientists are pioneering a method that pairs MRI with a special contrast agent that produces images of the heart’s metabolism. These images give insight into what is going on much sooner than is possible now—even before diagnosis—which could let doctors predict the disease course and enable earlier, tailored treatment, ultimately saving lives.


• Opening the blood-brain barrier in Alzheimer’s disease: The blood-brain barrier blocks almost all drugs from entering the brain. Focused ultrasound uses beams of sound and microbubbles guided by MRI to open the barrier safely and reversibly. Sunnybrook’s experts have made history by using focused ultrasound to breach the blood-brain barrier in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. If this first phase is successful, the next phase could introduce drug therapies. These findings have implications for other brain diseases, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson’s and brain cancers.

The Research Action Fund was founded to give you the chance to help advance ideas and innovations that will transform health care for you and those you love.

These are game-changing technologies and techniques that will have a direct impact on patients right now, and for future generations. Your gift to the Research Action Fund will help us build on these innovations to treat more diseases and save more lives.

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