The Brain Health Accelerator Seeks to Revolutionize Neuroscience Research

The Allen Institute launched the Brain Health Accelerator on Thursday to expedite understanding of and treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. The institute announced the project today as a global initiative that will use cutting-edge technology to improve modeling, therapeutic development, and the understanding of disease mechanisms. The Allen Institute said the project has $400 million in funding support from the Allen Institute, the Bezos family, Amazon Web Services, the National Institutes of Health, EverythingALS, and other partners. Ed Lein, vice president and executive director of the Brain Health Accelerator, said the institute has a niche of bringing technologies at scale to generate ground truth understanding of disease. Dirk Keene, a neuropathologist at UC San Diego, said the institute focus on team science helps tackle challenging problems. Keene will run a tissue coordinating center for the accelerator and said a west coast network with UW will form, adding more sites are needed. The accelerator plans to integrate data from transcriptomics, proteomics, neuroimaging, connectomics, and genetic studies and use AI to create disease models. Researchers will study how signatures of disorders overlap rather than isolate diseases. The project also aims to translate findings into therapeutic targets including cell-type selective therapies. Lein said targeting specific cells can make therapies more reproducible.