Blavatnik Family Foundation Gives Yale School of Medicine $10 Million to Launch an Inflammation Science Initiative
Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, has announced a $10 million grant from the Blavatnik Family Foundation to launch a new research initiative in inflammation science, which will also fund graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.
Inflammation is the immune system's response to infection and injury; when it misfires and damages healthy tissue, it can become chronic and affect almost any organ or system. The new initiative will be dedicated to understanding the fundamental principles that govern inflammation and the fundamental mechanisms of immune development in health and disease.
The initiative will be directed by Ruslan Medzhitov, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology, whose groundbreaking discoveries about the innate immune system reshaped the field. He will lead the work alongside Yale colleagues Noah Palm, Liza Konnikova and Akiko Iwasaki. Bringing together researchers across disciplines, the team will examine how infection, environmental factors and the microbiome influence inflammation, seeking biological principles that connect seemingly unrelated conditions.
A key component of the grant is the new Blavatnik Graduate and Postdoctoral Fellows program, which will build a pipeline of talent dedicated to inflammation science. 'We are grateful for the Blavatnik Family Foundation's vision and generosity,' said Nancy J. Brown, 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.'
'Yale School of Medicine's exceptional scientists are uniquely positioned to break new ground in inflammation science,' said Len Blavatnik, founder of the Blavatnik Family Foundation. The foundation has supported inflammation science at Yale for more than a decade, enabling advances from the basic principles that control inflammation to the systemic interactions between the gut, the immune system and the brain.
Yale School of Medicine official announcement
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 耶鲁医学院（资料图）。ajay_suresh 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Yale School of Medicine (file photo). Photo by ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
