I want to open today’s edition by reflecting on some news out of Washington state. Yesterday, Washington State Universityannounced a plan to open a new neuroscience institute at its Spokane campus.
The center will conduct clinical and discovery research, as well as study assistive technology, for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other brain diseases. It will be named after WSU alum and NFL defensive back Steve Gleason, who was diagnosed with ALS in 2011 at age 34.
The new neuroscience institute joins a handful of other such academic centers undergoing launches or upgrades on the West Coast. A Wall Street billionaire bankrolled one at the University of California, San Francisco, in 2016. At Stanford University, a new research complex for interdisciplinary study of the brain is slated to open this year. And at Caltech, a new neuroscience research building is scheduled to open in 2020, supported by a billionaire couple that made their fortune from a Chinese games company.
Taken together, these centers represent a serious investment in brain research. They’re ramping up at a time when there’s truly exciting and promising work being done in the field, especially in the realm of brain implants and technologies meant to make it easier to live with a brain disease.
But it’s also worth noting just how little progress scientists have made against these devastating diseases. Drug companies, after all, have poured billions of dollars into neuroscience in recent years with little to show for their investment. As they know well, it won’t be easy for the West Coast’s new and upgraded academic research centers to move the needle.
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