McGill University has announced a C$15.3 million ($11.4 million) gift from the Irving Ludmer Family Foundation in support of a brain research collaboration with the university’s Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics & Mental Health and its research partners across Montreal.

The gift will create the Ludmer Centre Single-Cell Genomics Brain Initiative, extending the collaboration between the center (which the Ludmer Foundation helped established in 2013) and its partners—the Douglas Mental Health University Institute (Douglas) and the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (Davis) at Jewish General Hospital and McGill’s Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (the Neuro)—to explore the role of individual cells in brain health and disease, including common brain illnesses such as depression and schizophrenia. Using a map of the human brain at a single-cell resolution along with the analysis of individual brain cells at the molecular, anatomical, and structural levels, researchers will be able to better understand normal brain function and treat psychopathologies, neurological disorders, and brain cancers.

In addition, the gift will fund a faculty position at each partner organization. A new position at Douglas will focus on psychiatric disorders, while a new faculty member at the Neuro will study neurological disorders and neuroinformatics, and another at Davis will develop analytical strategies to collect single-cell data.

“I wanted to take this opportunity to bring together research communities and support a truly collaborative effort, where partner institutions share best practices and build on each other’s strengths,” said Irving Ludmer (’57), president of Cleman Ludmer Steinberg, an investment holding company. “This kind of collaboration benefits the research community and the future of brain research. It’s why both McGill and Montreal are centers of excellence at the forefront of neuroscience.”

(Photo credit: Owen Egan/McGill University)