Dr. Timsy Bhando is based out of McMaster University. Pictured: Dr. Timsy Bhando. Photo Credit: Timsy Bhando/LinkedIn.
Dr. Timsy Bhando, a researcher based out of Hamilton’s McMaster University, recently won a prestigious award for her work developing a new natural drug that has the potential to treat dementia, depression, and brain diseases.
Bhando’s newly discovered novel fungi compound, called KCB-100, is reportedly showing huge potential.
Her work earned her an Outstanding Innovation Award from Mitacs, a Canadian innovation organization that connects businesses and researchers.
Mitacs is supported by the Government of Ontario and drives competitiveness in a number of different sectors including agriculture, advanced manufacturing, critical technologies, energy, and life sciences.
Bhando says that Mitacs provided “very essential support” for her work, which also involves helping to develop a library of thousands of fungal extracts for future exploration.
She has also accepted a full-time position to oversee preclinical testing of KCB-100 in animal models.
A press release states, “To date, [Bhando] has demonstrated that the compound helps neurons in the brain to survive injury, grow and make connections called synapses, meaning it has potential to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia or Parkinson’s, as well as depression.”
Bhando focused her efforts on fungi as a source for new drugs because she believes “nature makes the best medicine” and also because other effective drugs have historically come from fungi such as penicillin to treat bacterial infection and statins to lower cholesterol.
“The reality is we’ve exhausted our ability to explore synthetic drug compounds in the lab – researchers are generating millions of molecules but they’re not making new discoveries,” she adds.
Although Bhando is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, her work with KCB-100 is being supported by Vancouver-based organization Kapoose Creek Bio.
Kapoose Creek Bio is a startup that is specifically focused on accelerating the discovery and development of natural drugs.
At McMaster University, Bhando’s research is supervised by Professor Eric Brown who is the CEO of Kapoose Creek Bio and the Canada Research Chair in Microbial Chemical Biology.
Kapoose is also supported by Global Nexus, a health innovation accelerator based at McMaster University, and recently signed an exclusive licensing and asset acquisition agreement with Hamilton-based Adapsyn Bioscience to expand their operations to Hamilton.
Through the agreement, they gained access to Adapsyn’s artificial intelligence technology and natural products database and acquired their core chemistry laboratory at McMaster Innovation Park.
Other researchers who were awarded by Mitacs for their innovations include David Black, a University of British Columbia PhD student for his work on an immersive environment remote ultrasound system to make procedures easier to access and more affordable and Dr. Paul Onkundi Nyangaresi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, who developed a low-cost, simple water disinfection system that is already being used in Kenya.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
