By Adam Allington, KWMU
St. Louis, MO – Washington University has received a $10-million endowment from the Danforth Foundation to fund research on neurological disorders.
The money will be administered by the Hope Center, which aims to accelerate treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's and MS.
Dr. Mark Goldberg is a neurologist with Washington University School of Medicine.
He says the money will provide seed grants for researchers at a stage when they may have trouble getting federal funding.
"Sometimes these discoveries are so new that there's no good way to support this research financially its sometimes too innovative and too risky", says Goldberg.
"What our seed grants do is they begin projects which are then funded externally often times."
Last year, researchers at the Hope Center identified a gene linked to ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease.