Allen Institute for Brain Science
Headquarters of the Allen Institute for Brain Science
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| Formation | 2003 |
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| Founders | Paul Allen, Jody Allen |
| Type | Independent, nonprofit medical research organization (IRS exemption status): 501(c)(3) |
| Purpose | Neuroscience, Brain Research, Biology, Technology |
| Headquarters | Seattle, Washington, United States |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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Paul Allen, Founder Jody Allen, Founder, Allan Jones, Ph.D., CEO Christof Koch, Ph.D., President and Chief Scientific Officer |
| Website | Allen Institute for Brain Science |
The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a Seattle-based independent, nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. The Allen Institute promotes the advance of brain research by providing free data and tools to scientists worldwide with the aim of catalyzing discovery in disparate research programs and disease areas.
Started with $100 million in seed money from Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen in 2003, the Institute tackles projects at the leading edge of science—far-reaching projects at the intersection of biology and technology. The resulting data create free, publicly available resources that fuel discovery for countless researchers.
The Allen Institute for Brain Science provides researchers and educators with a variety of unique online public resources for exploring the nervous system. Integrating extensive gene expression data and neuroanatomy, complete with sophisticated data search and viewing tools, these resources are all openly accessible via the Allen Brain Atlas data portal.
The inaugural project of the Allen Institute was announced on September 26, 2006. Named the Allen Brain Atlas, it was a web-based, three-dimensional map of gene expression in the mouse brain detailing more than 21,000 genes at the cellular level.
Since the project’s launch, it has been renamed the Allen Mouse Brain Atlas to distinguish it from subsequent Atlas projects.
On 17 July 2008, the Allen Institute for Brain Science launched the online “Allen Spinal Cord Atlas. The spinal cord atlas is an interactive, genome-wide map showing where each gene is expressed, or "turned on", throughout the mouse spinal cord. It is set up like the Allen Institute's earlier atlas of the adult mouse brain. The map could help reveal new treatments for human neurological disorders. The map points researchers toward places where genes are active
The Allen Spinal Cord Atlas led to the discovery of a new class of cells in the spinal cord that behave like stem cells, according to researchers at the University of British Columbia. Jane Roskams, the neuroscientist who led the study, said that, “By using the Allen Spinal Cord Atlas, we were able to discover a brand new cell type that has previously been overlooked and that could be an important player in all manner of spinal cord injury and disease, including multiple sclerosis and ALS.”
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