Yale School of Medicine announced it has received a $10 million grant from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to launch a research initiative on inflammation, a process linked to illnesses including cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.
The grant will support research into the fundamental principles that govern inflammation and will fund graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. Yale said inflammatory diseases occur when the immune system mistakenly damages healthy tissue, leading to chronic inflammation that can affect almost any organ or system in the body.
“We are grateful for the Blavatnik Family Foundation’s vision and generosity,” said Nancy J. Brown, MD, the Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Yale School of Medicine, “Inflammation underlies nearly every disease we face today, and unraveling mechanisms of inflammation in health and disease can transform medicine for generations to come. This grant focuses on the fundamental mechanism(s) of immune development in health and disease.”
Yale said the foundation has supported biomedical innovation at the university for more than a decade, including inflammation research that has yielded advances in understanding the basic principles that control inflammation and the interactions between the gut, the immune system and the brain.
Len Blavatnik, founder of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, said: “Yale School of Medicine’s exceptional scientists are uniquely positioned to break new ground in inflammation science. We are proud to support their efforts and promote new and integrated research for improved health.”
A team of Yale researchers will lead the initiative, with Ruslan Medzhitov, PhD, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, as director.
“Having known Len Blavatnik since I was honored with the first Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in 2007, I am especially grateful for the foundation’s continued support,” said Medzhitov, “This new grant is transformative. Philanthropic support like this is increasingly vital because it enables the kind of creative, high-risk research that is often constrained by the rigid structure of federal funding.”
The initiative will bring together experts in cell biology, physiology, neuroscience and genetics. Its research will focus on how infection, environmental factors and the microbiome influence the immune system and trigger inflammatory responses that affect everything from fetal development to brain health. Noah Palm, PhD, professor of immunobiology, whose research focuses on how the microbiome shapes immune health, said: “This grant will fund our newest efforts to map the cellular and molecular conduits linking the gut and the brain, including studies focused on understanding how small molecules produced by our microbiome influence immune responses in distal tissues.”
The grant also establishes the Blavatnik Graduate and Postdoctoral Fellows program, which Yale said will create a pipeline of talent dedicated to inflammation science.
