Tag: Allen Frontiers Group

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Allen Frontiers Group awards $10M for neuroimmunology

Immune cells in spinal cord region
Immune cells (yellow and purple) fill a sinus (teal) in the outer layer of the meninges, the tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord. (Credit: Justin Rustenhoven / Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis)

The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Seattle-based Allen Institute, is launching a research center in New York to focus on interactions between the nervous system and the immune system.

The Allen Discovery Center for Neuroimmune Interactions, headquartered at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will receive $10 million over the course of four years from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, with a total potential for $20 million over eight years.

The award is the result of an open call for research proposals exploring fundamental questions at the intersection of neuroscience and immunology. It’s the latest open-science initiative celebrating the legacy of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who died five years ago at the age of 65 from complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

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Allen Institute gives a boost to cell researchers

Samantha Morris in lab
Biomedical researcher Samantha Morris, shown here in her lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is one of the newly named Allen Distinguished Investigators. ““This award is enabling us to take a big risk in our arena by generating a completely new technology, one which will be useful to the scientific community. That’s really exciting for us,” she said. (Washington University in St. Louis Photo)

The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of Seattle’s Allen Institute, is making a total of $7.5 million in awards to its latest class of five biomedical researchers.

The themes for this year’s Allen Distinguished Investigators focus on stem cell therapies and single-cell interactions in their native environments.

“The field of stem cell biology has the potential to change how we treat diseases by helping precision medicine, and there’s so much we still don’t understand about the interplay between cells in living tissues or organs,” Kathy Richmond, director of the Frontiers Group, said today in a news release.

“Our 2019 Allen Distinguished Investigators are pushing their fields in these two areas, through new technology development, probing pivotal interactions in the body that cause health to fail, and generating creative new stem cell models that will improve our understanding of different human diseases,” she said.

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$43 million effort targets brain-blood connection

Salk researchers
Rusty Gage and Carol Marchetto study brain cells at the Salk Institute. Gage will lead one of three teams taking part in a $43 million research initiative created by the American Heart Institute and the Allen Institute’s Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. (Salk Institute Photo)

Medical researchers know all about the blood-brain barrier, but Seattle’s Allen Institute and the American Heart Association have selected three teams to participate in a $43 million initiative to study the blood-brain connection.

The American Heart Association-Allen Initiative in Brain Health and Cognitive Impairment initiative, launched in May, is aimed at merging research focusing on the brain and on the blood circulation system to develop a new understanding of age-related brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease — and find new ways to counter such disorders.

Today the heart association and the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, announced which researchers will take part in the effort. The three teams are headquartered at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Stanford University School of Medicine in California; and at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center in Ohio.

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Paul Allen set aside funds to fight his disease

Matthias Stephan
Matthias Stephan, who studies lymphoma at Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is among 10 newly named Allen Distinguished Investigators. (Fred Hutch News Service Photo / Robert Hood)

It’s notable that the newest class of Allen Distinguished Investigators, announced today by the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, includes researchers who are developing new treatments for lymphoma. Lymphoma is the type of blood cancer that led to the death of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the namesake and funder of the research program.

The decision to focus on that disease — along with nuclear biophysics, neuroimmunology, brain cells and Alzheimer’s disease, and cellular development and aging — was made last year, long before the billionaire philanthropist was diagnosed with a recurrence of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nevertheless, the choice is in line with Allen’s willingness to tackle the toughest challenges in bioscience.

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Biomedical labs get $10 million boosts

Jay Shendure
University of Washington geneticist Jay Shendure will direct one of the newly created Allen Discovery Centers. (Allen Institute Photo)

The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen to speed the pace of biomedical breakthroughs, is adding two more research centers to its lineup – including one at the University of Washington.

Each of the Allen Discovery Centers will receive $10 million in grants over the next four years, with the potential for a total $30 million boost over eight years.

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Allen Frontiers Group boosts biomedicine

Molecular structure
Three Allen Distinguished Investigator projects focus on epigenetics, or how genes are turned on and off. Researchers will study how the 3-D shape of the genome and the presence of regulatory molecules impact the behavior of cells.(Molekuul.be via Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group)

Epigenetics, aging and microbial evolution: Those are the latest words in biomedical research for the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, backed up with $7.5 million in awards for five teams of scientists.

Each of the teams will receive $1.5 million over the next three years to boost early-stage studies that have the potential to yield medical breakthroughs.

“It’s part of Paul Allen’s growing commitment to the idea that this is the century of bioscience,” Tom Skalak, executive director of the Seattle-based Frontiers Group, told GeekWire. Allen, one of the founders of Microsoft, launched the Frontiers Group last year with a $100 million commitment.

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