Developing Medicines through Open Science! Fantastic news was released today, Feb 27 2025, from Canadian organization Conscience who is supporting open science and nonprofit drug development. In honour of the upcoming Rare Disease Day (Feb 28, 2025), today’s grant announcement includes PSC!
PSC Partners and PSC Partners Canada are proud to be a part of this “radical collaboration!”
From the press release: Toronto, ON, Canada, February 27, 2025 — Conscience, a non-profit focused on accelerating drug discovery in areas of unmet medical need using open science and radical collaboration, is pleased to announce three recipients and projects have been approved for its Developing Medicines through Open Science (DMOS) program. The DMOS program is designed to foster collaborative drug discovery and development in areas often overlooked by the pharmaceutical industry, such as rare and orphan diseases and antimicrobial resistance. The inaugural round of this program is offering a total of $5M in funding and partnership opportunities to support significant advancements toward drug candidates.
“We are grateful for how the Conscience grant is supporting Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) research. PSC is a rare and devastating liver disease with no treatments or cure. This grant enables us to build on work that maps PSC liver cells for pursuing preclinical drug development. With an unwavering commitment to a cure, we believe in the power of an open science approach. We envision a world where a PSC diagnosis comes with a safe and effective treatment, and Conscience’s Developing Medicines through Open Science program takes us one step closer”
– Mary Vyas, President, PSC Partners Seeking a Cure Canada
Details on the PSC project
Focus: Open Drug Discovery to Treat Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis
Description: Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) is a rare liver disease with no approved treatments and a significant unmet medical need. The limited patient population makes investment in drug development for PSC challenging. This project seeks to address this by taking a collaborative open science approach to advance new treatments for this rare disease, which currently has only a limited number of active pharmaceutical programs.
Recipients:
SME: Agora Open Science Trust Representative: Dr. Peter Sampson, VP of Drug Discovery and Development
Principal Investigator: Dr. Sonya MacParland, Senior Scientist in the Ajmera Transplant Centre, University Health Network
Co-Investigators: Dr. Ian McGilvray, Professor of Surgery, University Health Network Dr. Gary Bader, Professor, University of Toronto
Collaborators: Mary Vyas, PSC Partners Canada & PSC Partners, Stephen Rossi, PSC Partners
Scientific Approach: The investigators have developed the first transcriptomic map of the PSC liver, providing an unprecedented view of the disease mechanisms at the cellular level. This work has enabled the identification of known targets and their corresponding drugs, highlighting SYK inhibition as an avenue to target immune-mediated fibrotic pathways within the PSC liver. This project will test the ability of SYK inhibitors to modulate fibrogenic processes in human explanted PSC tissue in comparison to healthy human liver.
Conscience Funding: $461,241 CAN to investigators
Term: 2 years
Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario 
