ニュース

Chan-Zuckerberg chooses Imec to research neurodegenerative diseases

This network brings together experimental scientists from diverse biomedical research fields, as well as computational biologists and physicians, to understand the underlying causes of neurodegenerative disorders.

’The causes of most neurodegenerative diseases are only partly understood, and there are still no effective therapies to cure, prevent, or even treat most of these disorders,” says CZI’s Katja Brose.

The CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network now seeks to address these gaps by launching a collaborative network to focus on neurodegenerative diseases as a broad class of disorders, with shared features and potentially shared solutions.

The Belgian team plans to create a new chip to study the mechanisms of Parkinson’s disease.

The chip will be used to measure electrophysiological changes between neuronal circuits of cells obtained from healthy people and from Parkinson’s patients.

The technology derived from the chip which used  Parkinson’s patients’ data can then be applied to  other neurodegenerative diseases.

The foundation selected nine project teams from a very competitive international call. Each team will receive $1.05 million. Next to the Belgian consortium, only one other non-US team was selected.

“Despite tremendous investment and progress in understanding neurodegenerative diseases, there remains a surprising amount of very basic information about their biology that we don’t know,” concludes Brose. “by supporting these nine interdisciplinary collaborations and generating shared tools, resources and platforms, we hope to inspire a new approach to tackling neurodegenerative disease — one that leverages the combined power of basic science and technology to accelerate progress towards clinical goals.”