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UCSF gets $46M autism grant from Sergey Brin-backed foundation
San Francisco Chronicle • • health
Key Points:
- UCSF has received a $46 million grant from the Sergey Brin Family Foundation's ARIA initiative to advance autism research and potential therapies, marking one of the largest single grants for basic research at the university.
- The funding supports the Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) at UCSF to expand studies on autism-related genes, their proteins, and protein interactions that may influence brain development and autism risk.
- Recent research, soon to be published in Science, maps protein connections critical to autism, aiming to identify key proteins for targeted drug development to treat the condition.
- ARIA is part of CNS Quest, a larger effort funded by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and Catalyst4, supporting research on autism, Parkinson's disease, bipolar disorder, and other central nervous system disorders.
- Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google, has donated an estimated $5.1 billion to philanthropy, focusing heavily on central nervous system diseases and climate change.
