Spearheading Transformative Brain Health, Research and Discovery

In September 1986, Mark M. Tanz, a prominent Toronto business figure whose mother had died of Alzheimer’s disease, offered a landmark donation to the University of Toronto to establish a Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Centre.

In June 1990, the Neurodegenerative Disease Centre officially opened in the Tanz Neurosciences Building at 6 Queen’s Park Crescent West on the University of Toronto's St. George campus. Its creation was made possible through support from the University, the Alzheimer’s Association, and several private donors—most notably Mr. Tanz and his friends, who contributed significantly to the centre’s seed funding.

Donald Crapper-McLachlan, a key visionary and advocate for the centre (alongside Bill Tatton, lead of the Neuroscience Planning Committee), served as the inaugural interim director. After a four-years tenure, he passed the role to Peter Carlen. In May 1995, Peter St. George-Hyslop, a renowned investigator of degenerative diseases, assumed the directorship and served until 2019.

During St. George-Hyslop’s tenure, in 2010, the centre was officially renamed the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases in recognition of Mark Tanz’s visionary philanthropic support. In 2013, the centre relocated to state-of-the-art facilities in the Krembil Discovery Tower at Toronto Western Hospital.

In 2019, leadership of the centre was assumed by Graham Collingridge, an internationally renowned scientist known for his groundbreaking work on the cellular basis of memory and its role in brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

With files from “Partnership for Excellence: Medicine at the University of Toronto and Academic Hospitals” by Edward Shorter

Researchers and experts regularly cite the Tanz Centre’s body of research, which has been recorded widely in over 430 papers in peer-reviewed journals and over 1,055 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Tanz discoveries have been published in frontline scientific and medical journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, Nature Cell Biology, Journal of Cell Biology, Nature Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Tanz researchers have given over 1,300 invited lectures around the world and their findings have been communicated to the society at large via more than 50 lay lectures and interviews, as well as through numerous television, radio, magazine and newspaper articles.

The Centre has also been an important contributor to Continuing Medical Education for physicians from a variety of disciplines in Canada and around the world. Noteworthy is the internationally renowned Canadian Conference on Dementia, which began in 1992 as a Tanz Centre initiative to educate family physicians and community specialists in Ontario about these diseases.

Discovered the five genes associated with Alzheimer's Disease.

Developed the first antibody that labels a misfolded protein implicated in ALS. The antibody could be used as a biomarker for ALS or to develop drugs or immunixation therapies.

Developed new insights into the protein involved in the development of human Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Mad Cow disease, and discovered an antibody that may assist in diagnosis and treatment. 

Demonstrated that Alzheimer's Disease is a complex disorder with multiple causes.

Advanced the understanding of the dyfunction of two key proteins in the development of some forms of Parkinson's disease.

Proven that vaccination of mice with Alzheimer's Disease can prevent or reverse cognitive and memory impairments. This discovery spurred the subsequent testing of the vaccine in humans.