Brin Foundation Grants $46 Million to UCSF Autism Research

Google co-founder Sergey Brin's family foundation has granted $46 million to UCSF for autism research and potential therapies. The award comes from Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA), an initiative funded by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, and goes to Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI), a research unit within UCSF.

The grant will be used to scale up work that QBI researchers have already been doing on genes associated with autism. This research maps out connections between proteins and narrows in on the connections that appear particularly important in driving autism.

UCSF professor Nevan Krogan, director of QBI and senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, said this approach gives researchers a deeper understanding of autism and 'more shots on goal' to potentially develop small molecule drugs in a more targeted and effective way.