Therapeutics, incorporating biopharmaceuticals & lifestyle/cultural interventions
Lead: Hanns Lochmüller
It is important to consider all potential avenues of therapies for brain-heart diseases. Therefore, biologically targeted, and nonpharmacological lifestyle approaches to therapy will be investigated. Leveraging the existing extensive clinical trials infrastructure, expertise in therapeutic target validation, drug discovery, biotherapeutics, and biomanufacturing, new treatments for integrated brain-heart conditions will be developed. Novel therapeutic protocols and approaches including behavioural, electrophysiological, structural, and functional neuroimaging will be employed. Incorporating musical therapy, Indigenous healing circles, and ceremonies, will help to improve cognitive and mental health, increase rehabilitation, and maintain functional capacity in high-risk patient groups. Patients, racialized minorities, Indigenous people, and marginalized communities will co-develop and co-evaluate the research program. The convergence of biopharmaceutical therapies with lifestyle interventions, that incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing, will create a new approach to treat brain-heart conditions early and prevent chronic disease.
Deliverables: Develop new therapeutics to treat B-H conditions simultaneously. Create holistic therapy that integrates biopharmaceutical with lifestyle/cultural interventions. Engage patients and people with lived to enhance uptake within marginalized groups. Employ the two-Eyed seeing approach by integrating Indigenous healing with Western therapies. Create new protocols to test and implement music therapies for B-H conditions.