Weill Neurohub – UW News

UW joins industry-academia alliance to accelerate research in neuroscience

James Urton — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 15:29:36 +0000

Microscopy image showing the cytoskeleton within neurons, which are differentiating from induced pluripotent stem cells. Photo: UC San Francisco

The ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý has joined the Alliance for Therapies in Neuroscience (ATN), a long-term research partnership between academia and industry geared to transform the fight against brain diseases and disorders of the central nervous system.

in 2021 by the University of California, San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Genentech — a member of the Roche group — and Roche Holding AG, the ATN seeks to accelerate the development of new therapies for a broad range of brain and central nervous system conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, depression and psychiatric disorders. As part of the ATN, Genentech and Roche committed up to $53 million over 10 years for research at the ATN’s participating academic institutions, a collaboration that is unique for both its duration and the breadth of its ambitions.

“The Alliance for Therapies in Neuroscience is a new and transformative template for research and academia to partner, and it is an ideal collaboration for the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý,” said , the Emeritus Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair and professor of biology at the UW and CEO of the Washington Research Foundation, who led efforts to join the ATN. “Scientists at the UW will be integrated with academic and industry partners in a way that has simply never been done before. And the UW will bring its cross-disciplinary strengths and expertise in neuroscience — which span medicine, engineering and basic and clinical research — to address the urgent need for new therapies, remedies and treatments in neurological diseases and disorders.”

The new alliance builds on an existing academic partnership. In 2019, the UW, UCSF and UC Berkeley formed the , a $106-million, multidisciplinary endeavor supported by the Weill Family Foundation to speed discovery and innovation across neurological and psychiatric disorders, including basic research, technology development and patient care. With the UW’s accession to the ATN, scientists at all three Weill Neurohub institutions can now access this novel pipeline to channel academic discoveries toward new therapies and treatments.

“Pairing academic researchers with industry partners early in the research process will accelerate the transformation of academic research into clinical applications,” said Dr. , the Robert A. Fishman Distinguished Professor of Neurology at UCSF and director of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. “And this long-term, 10-year commitment from Genentech and Roche means that researchers at UCSF, UC Berkeley and now the UW will benefit from years-long, close collaborations with industry. It is a type of partnership that hasn’t been seen before in academic or industry research.”

“Membership of the UW in ATN fully leverages the vision that we and the Weills have for the Weill Neurohub,” said , the Evan Rausch Chair in Neuroscience at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Brain Initiative. “This collaboration with Roche and Genentech – world leaders in pharma and biotech — opens powerful new directions for Weill Neurohub researchers, with crucial resources and proven track records of bringing new treatments to patients and families.”

Teams of scientists at ATN institutions will drive efforts to profile the progression of disease, identify new targets for therapies and model their effectiveness. Existing organizational infrastructure within the Weill Neurohub will serve to coordinate the expanded ATN efforts. In addition to Daniel, the other UW leader within the Weill Neurohub and the ATN is Dr. , professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.

ATN endeavors are intended to meet current demands in neurological disease research and treatment, as well as lay the groundwork for future innovations in understanding and treating nervous system disorders.

“The ATN is focusing on pressing needs in neurological disorders across the board: not just therapies to treat conditions like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, but also methods to diagnose them at early stages, as well as understand them at the cellular and molecular level,” said , director of strategic initiatives at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

The UW brings a variety of strengths to the ATN, according to Daniel. Neuroscience expertise at the UW spans clinical trials, cell and molecular studies, computational modeling and even research into artificial intelligence. Neuroscientists are based across the UW’s STEM schools and colleges, including the School of Medicine, the College of Arts & Sciences and the College of Engineering. UW researchers have a strong track record of innovative cross-institutional collaborations in neuroscience with scientists across the region, including at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and the Allen Institute, which they can also draw on for ATN research.

“Through the ATN, all partners will bring their best and brightest to bear on these ‘boiling hot,’ challenging problems in neuroscience,” said Daniel.

New Weill Neurohub will unite UCSF, UC Berkeley, UW in race to find new treatments for brain diseases

UW News staff — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 18:07:38 +0000

$106 million initiative will accelerate neuroscience research by embracing artificial intelligence, engineering, data science, other ‘nontraditional’ fields

Gift brings Weill Family Foundation philanthropic giving in neuroscience to over $300 million, enabling bold approaches to curing these diseases

Microscopy image showing the cytoskeleton within neurons, which are differentiating from induced pluripotent stem cells. Photo: UC San Francisco

With a $106 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý have launched the , an innovative research network that will forge and nurture new collaborations between neuroscientists and researchers working in an array of other disciplines — including engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry and mathematics — to speed the development of new therapies for diseases and disorders that affect the brain and nervous system.

A 2016 study by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation estimated that, in the U.S. alone, neurological and psychiatric disorders and diseases — including Alzheimer’s; Parkinson’s; anxiety and depression; traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury; multiple sclerosis; ALS; and schizophrenia — carry an economic cost of more than $1.5 trillion per year, nearly 9 percent of GDP.

“The gains in knowledge amassed by neuroscientists over the past few decades can now be brought to the next level with supercomputers, electronic brain–computer interfaces, nanotechnology, robotics and powerful imaging tools,” said philanthropist Sanford I. “Sandy” Weill, chairman of the Weill Family Foundation. “The Neurohub will seize this opportunity by building bridges between people with diverse talents and training and bringing them together in a common cause: discovering new treatments to help the millions of patients with such conditions as Alzheimer’s disease and mental illness.”

Read more on President Ana Mari Cauce’s blog:

“Visionary gift creates neuroscience research opportunities in partnership with UCSF and UC Berkeley”

Complementing the strengths of UCSF, Berkeley and the UW, the Weill Neurohub will draw on the expertise and resources of the 17 National Laboratories overseen by the Department of Energy, which excel in bioengineering, imaging, and data science. In August 2019, the Weill Family Foundation and the DOE signed a Memorandum of Understanding creating a new public–private partnership. The partnership is exploring the use of the Department’s artificial intelligence and supercomputing capabilities, in conjunction with Bay Area universities and the private sector, to advance the study of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, who has spearheaded the creation of an AI and Technology Office during his tenure at DOE, said that the vision for the Weill Neurohub dovetails with his own mission to make publicly funded AI and supercomputing resources more widely accessible to advance scientific discovery. “We are on the cusp of great discoveries that could transform our approach to TBI, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological and psychiatric disorders, and easing access to the world-class computational power of our National Laboratories to initiatives like the Weill Neurohub is a win-win for science and the public sector — and, eventually, for patients.”

As many neurological disorders, such as dementia, are associated with aging, the costs of these unmet medical needs are expected to increase significantly in the coming years. California, with the largest aging population in the U.S., with one in five residents reaching age 65 or older in the next decade, faces particularly formidable challenges, said Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Every day, millions of people in California, the nation, and the world are facing the uncertainty of neuro-related diseases, mental illness and brain injuries, and collaboration between different disciplines in science, academia, government and philanthropy is critical to meet this challenge. Together, we must accelerate the development and use cutting-edge technology, innovation and tools that will advance research and practical application that will benefit people across the world and for generations to come,” said Newsom. “I want to thank Sandy Weill and his wife, Joan, for their amazing work, kindness, dedication and commitment to philanthropic causes, especially when they open doors, bridge gaps, and make innovation and collaboration possible to advance causes that can truly have an impact on people’s quality of life.”

Sanford and Joan Weill. Photo: UC San Francisco

The Weill Neurohub will enable the three universities to work together on these pressing problems. For example, the UW and UCSF, renowned research universities with long traditions of excellence in basic neuroscience research, also have federally sponsored Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, or ADRCs. Through the Weill Neurohub, members of the UW’s ARDC, part of the UW Medicine Memory and Brain Wellness Center, and UCSF’s ADRC, led by the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, will collaborate with top neurodegeneration researchers at Berkeley.

The Weill Neurohub will provide funding for faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students at the UW, Berkeley and UCSF working on cross-disciplinary projects, including funding for “high-risk/high-reward” proposals that are particularly innovative and less likely to find support through conventional funding sources. But the bulk of the Weill Neurohub’s funding will support highly novel cross-institutional projects built on one or more of four scientific “pillars” that Weill Neurohub leaders have deemed priority areas for answering the toughest questions about the brain and discovering new approaches to disease: imaging; engineering; genomics and molecular therapeutics; and computation and data analytics.

The Weill Neurohub may seek additional academic, corporate and philanthropic partners to harness resources collaboratively, better scale research and development efforts, share information and data and create partnerships to make breakthroughs faster and at a lower cost than the current paradigm allows.

Relevant examples of interdisciplinary or cross-institutional neuroscience projects now underway at UCSF, Berkeley and/or the UW include:

Design and construction of “NextGen7T” MRI brain scanner technology, which will shatter current resolution limits, creating the world’s first clear images of brain structures as small as 200 to 300 microns — a quarter of the size of a grain of sand — which is about 60 times sharper than a standard hospital MRI. For brain function, NextGen7T will be able to detect activity in regions as small as 400 microns, allowing for the discovery of new brain circuits and, for the first time, detecting the direction of information flow in the brain. This breakthrough tool will provide Weill Neurohub investigators with deeper understanding of how brain structure and function change in disease, and to test the effectiveness of treatment innovations.
Customized neurotherapies based on the CRISPR gene-targeting system to treat rare inherited movement disorders and eye diseases that can lead to blindness.
Implants that read and decode brain signals that could allow paralyzed patients to easily control robotic limbs or exoskeletons, restoring their ability to use objects or walk; similar implants are under study to restore speech in stroke patients, to reduce chronic pain, and to treat severe, intractable depression and anxiety.
Miniaturized, non-invasive Band-Aid–sized devices that could provide therapeutic stimulation through the skin to treat spinal cord injury.
AI applications with the power to detect tiny but life-threatening hemorrhages in CT scans of the entire brain, which may contain over a million pixels, in minutes. With this information, neuroradiologists can quickly consult with neurologists and neurosurgeons, when time is of the essence, to zero in on the best treatment plan.
Tablet-based applications that seamlessly draw together medical records, images and population-derived data, giving patients with neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis an easy-to-use portal to record, analyze and understand their health.

This gift expands on the unique vision and mission of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established in 2016 with a $185 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sandy Weill — whose giving to the neuroscience community now exceeds $300 million — said UCSF’s Dr. , the Robert A. Fishman Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Weill Institute director.

“The UCSF Weill Institute set out to break down walls between the clinical disciplines of neurology, neurosurgery and psychiatry, and also bring these clinical specialties together with the basic neurosciences,” said Hauser. “Now, with the Weill Neurohub, we’re going even further: eliminating institutional boundaries between three great public research universities, and also other disciplinary walls between ‘traditional’ neuroscience and ‘non-traditional’ approaches to understanding the brain. By embracing engineering, data analysis and imaging science at this dramatically higher level — areas in which both Berkeley and the UW are among the best in the world — neuroscientists on all three campuses will gain crucial tools and insights that will bring us closer to our shared goal of reducing suffering from brain diseases.”

Hauser will serve as one of two co-directors of the new Weill Neurohub along with Berkeley’s , the Evan Rauch Chair of Neuroscience. Together with , the Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair and professor of biology at the UW, they will serve on the Weill Neurohub’s Leadership Committee.

“In the Weill Neurohub, the emphasis will be on technology to enable discovery of disease mechanisms, and thus development of novel treatments and early detection of neurologic diseases, to allow intervention before conditions become severe,” said Isacoff, who heads Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute. “The technologies include next-generation neuroimaging and therapeutic manipulations ranging from brain implants to CRISPR gene editing, with major efforts in machine learning and high-speed computation. I think these three campuses can succeed in this joint mission in a way that no others can — the combined expertise this group brings to the table, especially when you bring in the National Labs, really is unparalleled.”

Tom Daniel, the Joan and Richard Komen Endowed Chair and professor of biology at the ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý. Photo: ��Ӱ�Ӵ�ý

The UW’s Daniel added, “The Weill Neurohub brings together three outstanding public institutions, each with a deep commitment to bridge boundaries between science, engineering, computer science and data science to address fundamental problems in neuroscience and neural disorders. To my knowledge, this is a nationally unique enterprise — drawing on diverse approaches to accomplish goals no single institution could reach alone, as well as seeding and accelerating research and discovery.”

Neuroscientists have made huge strides in understanding the brain in the 30 years since President George H. W. Bush designated the 1990s as the “Decade of the Brain,” and subsequently through the National Institute of Health’s ongoing BRAIN Initiative, first announced by President Obama in 2013. But treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases have lagged far behind those for other common afflictions, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Much of the lack of progress on neurological and psychiatric disease is due to the unparalleled complexity of the nervous system, in which hundreds of billions of nerve cells and support cells form as many as 100 trillion connections in intricate three-dimensional networks throughout the brain and spinal cord. The Weill Neurohub’s leaders believe reaching beyond conventional approaches is essential to grappling with this complexity.

“Despite amazing advances in neuroscience, new therapies are not reaching patients with mental illness and neurological disorders nearly as quickly as they have for heart disease and cancer. And in addition to the terrible personal toll these illnesses exact on patients and their families, they also have a massive impact on our healthcare system and on the global economy,” said Joan Weill, president of the Weill Family Foundation. “Our goal, through the broad and multifaceted approach of the Weill Neurohub, is to begin to change that.”