UCSF Quantitative Biosciences Institute Announce Launch of READY Center

San Francisco, October 10, 2024 — The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) is excited to announce the recent launch of the Research and Engineering to Accelerate Discovery (READY) Center. This biomedical research center brings together expertise across academia and industry to accelerate the understanding of disease biology and the development of therapeutics. 

With the launch of the READY Center, QBI will advance the comprehension of disease states, unravel drivers of pathology, and inform potential therapeutic targets. The center merges innovative academic research with industrial-scale genome engineering, including CRISPR gene-editing technology, to yield an intricate map of the interface between human proteins and disease mechanisms in infectious disease, cancer, and neuropathologies. The center will be led by Dr. Lee Spraggon and QBI’s Director Dr. Nevan Krogan.

With support from the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, the READY Center is contributing to a project funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to accelerate the discovery of mechanisms underlying psychiatric neurodevelopmental disorders (NPD). Led by QBI Investigator Dr. Tomasz Nowakowski, the project was awarded $13.7 million to advance research into the molecular and neurodevelopmental basis of schizophrenia, building on prior work in Autism commenced by the QBI Psychiatric Cell Map Initiative (PCMI). 

This multidisciplinary scientific collaboration and the application of the READY center’s high-throughput cellular engineering approaches will allow for the development of the first-of-its-kind comprehensive molecular and proteomic landscape of schizophrenia. Using its advanced cell engineering platform, scientists at the READY Center will genetically edit human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for the study of 32 high-risk schizophrenia genes and clinical variants and support ongoing CIRM-funded efforts to develop powerful genomic tools for future disease therapeutics.

About QBI: The Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) is an organized research unit reporting through the UCSF School of Pharmacy. QBI fosters collaborations across the biomedical and the physical sciences, seeking quantitative methods to address pressing problems in biology and biomedicine. Motivated by problems of human disease, QBI is committed to investigating fundamental biological mechanisms, because ultimately solutions to many diseases have been revealed by unexpected discoveries in the basic sciences. Learn more at qbi.ucsf.edu.

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at ucsf.edu or see our Fact Sheet.

Media Contact: Gina Nguyen (ginat.nguyen@ucsf.edu)