A future breakthrough in neuroscience could have North Carolina connections.

President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative – Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies – second-year kickoff includes three RTP connections:

  • Funding from GlaxoSmithKline
  • Research grants for teams at UNC-Chapel Hill as well as Duke.

A collective $300 million in support from the private sector and government agencies highlighted a BRAIN conference at the White House on Tuesday.

GSK, which operates its North American headquarters in RTP, disclosed plans to invest as much as $5 million to develop what is called “innovative peripheral neurotechnologies.”

The drug giant launched its BRAIN-related initiative a year ago.

GSK said that within its “Innovation Challenge” as much as $5 million will be designated for seed and development investments. the goal is to “de-risk, design, develop and test technologies.”

“Launching today, the fund will rapidly engage, assess, and fund teams starting work in January 2015,” the White House said in the BRAIN announcement. “In the spirit of open collaboration, the Challenge requires the funded parties to provide unrestricted, royalty-free access for research purposes to all technologies and tools developed through the program.”

GSK also is offering a $1 million grant through a Bioelectronics Innovation Challenge.

The GSK Bioelectronic Medicines program also has funding available through a $50 million venture capital fund.

NIH Award for UNC-Chapel Hill

The UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke teams won National Institute Health grants, which total $46 million for the current fiscal year. Awards were named for researchers across the country.

The UNC team was selected in the “Tools for Cells and Circuits” category.

An “Enhanced Chemogenetic Toolkit” is the goal of the project. The team is led by Brian Roth, Jian Jin and Thomas Kash.

“Dr. Roth and colleagues will build second generation technology that uses artificial neurotransmitters and receptors to manipulate brain activity simultaneously across select cells and pathways to understand their functions and potentially treat brain disorders,” the NIH announced.

NIH Award for Duke

A Duke team won a grant in “Next Generation Human Imaging.”

The project is titled: “Path Toward MRI with Direct Sensitivity to Neuro-Electro-Magnetic Oscillations”

Led by Allen Song, the “group will develop a scanner technology sensitive enough to image brain activity in high resolution by directly tuning in the electromagnetic signals broadcast by neurons,” the NIH said.

For more about the BRAIN Initiative, check out the White House website.

For more about the NIH initiative, visit the project website.