How can funding basic science research in brain health lead to an intervention for the most serious COVID-19 cases?

Before I answer that question, let me take you back to a time period pre-COVID. Eight years ago, it was my privilege to join the philanthropic team of Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen.  At that time, he had already founded the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Using a model quite different from academia, the Allen Institute leveraged industrial-scale science with clear objectives and timelines and introduced large-scale team science to create the first of many easily accessible resources for the neuroscience community: an atlas of gene expression in the mouse brain.   

Since that time, Paul Allen’s science philanthropy grew to include a diverse array of scientific initiatives, designed with that common thread – to do things differently and make a big impact. One such initiative began in 2018 through a $43M partnership with the American Heart Association and The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group to “move the needle” in brain health and cognitive impairment research. The three teams of awardees chosen each presented a compelling research vision, delving creatively and deeply to better explore fundamental biology as a “way in” to understand the basic roots of age-related brain disorders.

Fast forward, and two years later we find ourselves in the midst of an unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.  

Returning to the original question, how can strides in brain research be connected to fighting COVID-19? The current work by an AHA-Allen Institute team, led by Dr. Mukesh Jain at University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University, is keenly focused on dementia. Following the logic that dementia may be the result of an overall issue of keeping “supplies and supply routes” open in the brain, Jain’s team crafted therapies to keep the blood vessels open and therapies which would optimize the delivery of oxygen – both approaches which would also be a key fit to treat the oxygen deficits experienced by COVID-19 patients.

Listen to our latest Lab Notes podcast to hear Dr. Jain talk about these experimental therapies:

Given the advanced stage of their research due to our funding and support from others, Jain and his colleagues are hoping to get some of these new treatments into clinical trials for COVID-19 patients in the months ahead, with the promise that they could help patients with the most severe illness.

While the full legacy of Paul Allen’s scientific philanthropy still continues to unfold , the power and veracity of his words remain true, that “all of us—philanthropists, governments, universities, and private companies alike—must invest much more in basic, fundamental science and in the intrepid scientists who are willing to pursue out-of-the-box approaches at the very edges of knowledge.”  As this case has shown, such investments not only allow us to address the challenges of today, but also to conquer the challenges of tomorrow.