In 1999, Ray was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McMaster University , where he started new projects on polyglutamine diseases, focusing on Huntington’s Disease. In 2001, Ray won the CIHR “New Scientist” award and his group is now supported by operating grants from Canada and the United States. In 2010, he was promoted to full Professor in Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences.
Professor Truant is Chair of the Scientific Advisory board of the Huntington Society of Canada since 2007. Dr. Truant is a recipient of the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and the 2014 Michael Wright Community Leadership Award.
The Truant lab is in an academic setting, but highly collaborative with pharmaceutical industry and biotech partners, as well as clinical collaborators, Dr. Mark Guttman at the Centre for Movement Disorders in Toronto and Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto, as well as Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky at McMaster’s Neuromuscular Disease Clinic. Dr. Truant is on the Scientific Advisory Board of Mitokinin LLC, a biotech firm dedicated to the development of small molecules drug therapy to restore the phosphorylation of mutant Huntingtin and thus treat Huntington’s disease.
