With two new funding mechanisms, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative reaches out of neuroscience to expand its Neurodegeneration Challenge Network

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RFA Now Open: CZI Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion Chal­lenge Net­work (Chan Zucker­berg Ini­tia­tive release):

“The Chan Zucker­berg Ini­tia­tive invites appli­ca­tions to join the CZI Neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion Chal­lenge Net­work, an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tive ini­tia­tive to increase under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal biol­o­gy of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­or­ders. Appli­ca­tions are being accept­ed for two fund­ing mechanisms:

1. CZI Ben Bar­res Ear­ly Career Accel­er­a­tion Awards: inves­ti­ga­tor awards for ear­ly career aca­d­e­m­ic inves­ti­ga­tors, espe­cial­ly those who are new to the field of neurodegeneration
2. CZI Col­lab­o­ra­tive Sci­ence Awards: awards for small group inter­dis­ci­pli­nary col­lab­o­ra­tions that include a physi­cian with active clin­i­cal engagement

…To encour­age new ideas, we strong­ly encour­age appli­ca­tions from researchers who are work­ing in rel­e­vant fields out­side of neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion and neu­ro­science  (such as cell biol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy, metab­o­lism, phys­i­ol­o­gy, and com­pu­ta­tion­al biol­o­gy). Pre­vi­ous work in neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion is not a pre­req­ui­site, as long as the pro­pos­al is able to make a strong case for poten­tial rel­e­vance to neurodegeneration…

As part of the col­lec­tive work of the Chal­lenge Net­work, CZI will ask inves­ti­ga­tors to con­tribute to the devel­op­ment, val­i­da­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of robust, reli­able, and scal­able exper­i­men­tal and ana­lyt­i­cal tools for the broad­er neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion com­mu­ni­ty. CZI will pro­vide infra­struc­ture sup­port for such com­mu­ni­ty tool devel­op­ment and dis­sem­i­na­tion efforts.

Exam­ples of the types of tools and resources that the Chal­lenge Net­work might devel­op and dis­sem­i­nate include but are not lim­it­ed to:

• Scal­able tools for cel­lu­lar analy­sis, includ­ing genom­ic, pro­teom­ic, and imag­ing meth­ods, opti­mized for human cells and rel­e­vance to neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion (for instance, tar­get­ed probes and label-free meth­ods for cel­lu­lar imag­ing of neu­rons and non-neu­ronal cells; robust affin­i­ty reagents for pro­teomics; genome edit­ing and sin­gle cell genom­ic approaches)…
• Rig­or­ous bench­mark datasets for the field, for instance, well-val­i­dat­ed lon­gi­tu­di­nal stud­ies of dis­ease pro­gres­sion that will inform more mech­a­nis­tic approaches.
• Devel­op­ment and appli­ca­tion of com­pu­ta­tion­al and machine learn­ing approach­es and tools to address neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion biol­o­gy, which might include genomics, pro­teomics, metabolomics, sys­tems biol­o­gy, imag­ing, and/or inte­gra­tion of data across exper­i­men­tal mod­els and scales.”

Learn more about the Request for Appli­ca­tions HERE.

News in Context:

• Bill Gates announces $50 mil­lion invest­ment to fight Alzheimer’s Disease
• Jan Samzelius, CEO of Brain­no­va­tions Win­ner Neu­raMetrix, encour­ages pio­neers to focus on “sim­ple, ele­gant solu­tions to big problems”
• Report: 35% of world­wide demen­tia cas­es could be pre­vent­ed by mod­i­fy­ing these 9 mod­i­fi­able risk factors
• Firms Race to Find New Ways to Scan Brain Health
• Pre­sen­ta­tions on How can we har­ness dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) to scale up brain research, assess­ments and inter­ven­tions, held dur­ing the 2017 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit: Brain Health & Enhance­ment in the Dig­i­tal Age (Decem­ber 5–7th):