Letter from the Board: August 2026
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Over the past year, the Pacific Parkinson's Research Institute (PPRI) has received extraordinary support from our many donors and volunteers. This generosity fuels our mission: to fund ground-breaking research toward a cure for Parkinson's disease, and to improve quality of life for those living with PD and for their loved ones.
Thanks to the remarkable generosity of our community, PPRI received $3.84 million during the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026. These gifts came in all sizes, made both during donors' lifetimes and through bequests in their estates. This support has enabled PPRI to achieve several noteworthy accomplishments since our last letter in December 2025. Let us tell you more.
Driving discovery
In February, we celebrated the arrival of Dr. Seyed-Mohammad (“Sam”) Fereshtehnejad to the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre (PPRC) as well as UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. The ability of UBC to attract this renowned PD research scientist to move to UBC was only possible because of PPRI. By way of the significant legacy gift received from the estate of Dr. Maria Stuchly, PPRI was able to create the $2.12 million Drs. Stuchly Fund for Excellence in Parkinson’s Research, named to recognize Drs. Stan and Maria Stuchly’s loyal support and shared commitment to Parkinson’s disease research.
Dr. Fereshtehnejad will have the opportunity to build and lead an integrated translational research program focused on screening for prodromal neurodegeneration, developing precision biomarkers, implementing lifestyle and digital preventive interventions, and assessing health-economic and policy impacts of preventive strategies in Parkinson’s disease.
Thanks to the significant cumulative impact of community donations, where every pledge has made a difference, PPRI has been able to create the $1.98 million PPRI Leadership Fund, enabling Dr. Fereshtehnejad to expand his research team and pursue his research on the REM sleep project "Acting on Your Dreams: Building the Vancouver REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder Cohort" ($921,928 budget). Two other leading-edge studies will also be funded under the Leadership Fund led by Dr. Silke Appel-Cresswell: “A Randomized, Controlled Trial of a Group-Based Lifestyle Intervention Program to Improve Outcomes and Reduce Health Care Costs in Parkinson’s Disease” ($549,102) and “A Phase 2 Feasibility Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of a Multi-Strain Probiotic in the Treatment of Early Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson’s Disease” ($509,014).
The creation of this entirely new path of Parkinson's research study within the University of British Columbia, driven forward by PPRI in concert with PPRC, exemplifies how every contribution to PPRI matters, whether as a research volunteer, a charitable donor, or a volunteer on our committees and board of directors.
We were delighted to be able to partner with Health Research B.C (HRBC) and the Parkinson’s Society of B.C. to fund a 2-year Research Trainee competition into the use of cutting-edge technology to examine genetic factors in PD. Specific details of the award will be announced in the early fall.
PPRI is partnering with Health Research B.C., the Brain Canada Foundation, and six other funding partners on the $3 million Advancing Groundbreaking Research in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases Team Award. Winners of the awards will be announced in early October 2026. PPRI will be contributing funding to three research projects focused on Parkinson’s disease and one project that addresses common themes to Alzheimer’s and PD.
Finally, Ian and Rosemary Mottershead provided another visionary donation of $1.21 million to continue supporting the work of Dr. Martin McKeown’s laboratory at PPRC. The new Ian and Rosemary Mottershead Fund of the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Institute will support Dr. Martin McKeown’s laboratory at PPRC to translate Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS) insights gained to date into a personalized, AI-guided stimulation system. Specifically, GVS 2.0 will integrate high-throughput mapping, behavioural testing, predictive modelling, and mechanistic imaging to identify the optimal stimulation pattern for each individual’s neural profile.
PPRI’s Research Committee is actively reviewing two other exciting research projects with leading B.C. clinician-researchers and expects to be able to make further announcements soon.
Building community
The highlight of our spring programming was the annual Scientific Briefing, held on May 11th, 2026 at the Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre at UBC and attended by over 110 members of our donor community, a record number of attendees. Dr. Silke Appel-Cresswell, Director of PPRC, was joined by her research colleagues who presented insights into leading PD research initiatives underway at UBC, made possible largely, and often only, through the support of the PPRI community.
A notable agenda item was the celebration of the extraordinary career of Dr. Jon Stoessl, a previous Director of PPRC, who announced his retirement from clinical practice in 2026. We are delighted that Dr. Stoessl will continue with his research program at PPRC, including using Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a brain imaging technique used to examine chemical function and cell behaviour in the brain.
A recent study by Drs. Stoessl and Sossi and their research partners, funded in part by PPRI, was recently published in a leading medical journal, Science Advances. It found that the brain reorganizes its dopamine signaling in the earliest stages of Parkinson’s disease, providing new insight into how the brain compensates for the loss of dopamine-producing neurons and why those adaptations may eventually contribute to movement and cognitive difficulties.
On June 19th, at the North Shore Seniors’ Health Expo, Dr. Lynn Beattie, Board member at PPRI, and Dr. Samantha Schaffner, Research Associate at PPRC, made a presentation on the critically important work of the Bjorn Moller Research Repository (BMRR), a biobanking initiative collecting biosamples and demographic data of individuals living with PD, other movement disorders, as well as healthy controls.
Dr. Schaffner was recruiting BMRR participants for their biosamples and data, which will be used in multiple future research studies. As of July 24, 2026, 204 participants enrolled in the BMRR have completed their baseline in-person visit to provide biosamples, and 18 have returned to do their 18-month follow-up visit. There are now over 5000 biosamples within the BMRR repository. In addition, PPRC has obtained approval from the UBC ethics board to expand the BMRR to include data collected as part of a previous clinical database initiative (>1000 individuals), as well as data and biosamples collected from other Appel-Cresswell lab studies (including the ~300-person, 5-year Longitudinal Microbiome in PD study).
Should you have an interest in participating in this essential research, as a PD participant or the control group, please contact bjorn.moller.repository@ubc.ca. The North Shore Seniors’ Health Day event was generously supported by Rochelle and Bjorn Moller, who have also contributed $1.0 million to the Bjorn Moller Research Repository through their family foundation.
Succession within PPRI also continues to be a top priority. With that goal in mind, we would like to mention that two new volunteers from our community have accepted our offer to join PPRI’s Research Committee: Dr. Elise Fear, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Software Engineering at the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, with research interests in microwave imaging and sensing including its medical applications; and Mr. Les Mackoff, who has practiced law in California and Vancouver for 33 years. Les has tried major criminal, commercial, personal injury and products cases and appeared before all levels of courts in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada.
Sincere appreciation
On behalf of the PPRI Board, we would like to thank each of you for your generosity, partnership, and shared commitment to drive groundbreaking PD research through PPRI.
Warm regards,
Don Anderson
Chair, Board of Directors
Mr. Roger Scott-Douglas
Vice-Chair, Board of Directors