$20M helps Sunnybrook create integrated Brain Sciences Centre

Toronto, ON – Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is creating a new facility that it says will revolutionize brain sciences treatment and research in Canada. The state-of-the-art Brain Sciences Centre, the first of its kind in Canada, is dues to a lead gift of $20 million from the Hurvitz Family Foundation.

The Hurvitz Brain Sciences Centre will take an unprecedented approach to collaboration across disciplines, linking experts in each field of brain sciences – psychiatry, neurology, imaging, pharmacology, neurosurgery, ophthalmology, and geriatrics – in an effort to accelerate research and slow the progress of brain disorders.

Along with the naming of the Centre, Sunnybrook’s brain sciences program will be renamed the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program.

The hospital’s current mental health wing will be transformed by combining renovated and retrofitted areas with a vast expansion. The current space is 62,000 square feet – the new centre will be approximately twice that size, and the renovated sections will blend seamlessly with the new building.

“We are the only place in Canada where world-class researchers and clinicians in all three of the most common brain disorders – dementia, stroke, as well as depression and anxiety  – work closely together to transform care,” said Dr. Anthony Levitt, chief of the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program. “We do this because the three are inter-related. People with any one of these conditions are more likely to suffer from one of the others. What we learn about one will help us with all. Bringing this work together is an absolutely critical next step in understanding the causes and developing new treatments for these brain conditions.”

The total cost of the Hurvitz Brain Sciences Centre is estimated to be $50 million. It will combine a renovation of Sunnybrook’s existing F wing with a new building of the same size alongside it.