Science & Medicine

As researchers work toward a cure for Parkinson’s disease, they have discovered a crucial link between a protein called alpha-synuclein and the debilitating neurodegenerative disease.

Partnering with The Michael J. Fox Foundation, Griffin Catalyst funded a competition which challenged researchers to develop a tool to visualize and trace alpha-synuclein in the living human brain for the first time. The competition’s promising results have catapulted the field forward and have put us on a path to revolutionizing care for millions of Parkinson’s patients around the world.

When researchers had a daring hypothesis to use the body’s own mitochondria in a new surgical treatment, a Griffin Catalyst gift to Boston Children’s Hospital provided funding to try this novel, potentially life-saving approach.

The early use of this new mitochondrial transplantation technique contributed to doctors’ and researchers’ efforts to save the lives of infants with otherwise fatal heart conditions. Griffin Catalyst’s investment enables partners to develop pioneering treatments long before they are advanced enough to receive federal funding or private investment—having wider ramifications for the field of medicine.

The digital transformation has placed data at the center of just about every industry. Perhaps nowhere is the opportunity more significant, or less realized, than medicine, where big data has the potential to revolutionize our understanding and treatment of disease.

Griffin Catalyst is advancing this effort through the support of Nightingale Open Science and the Open Datasets Initiative, enabling the world’s leading researchers to leverage machine learning and predictive analytics to solve some of medicine’s most important and urgent challenges.

In early 2020, a global pandemic was imminent and the need for action was urgent. Ken Griffin assessed both the scale of the crisis and the scope of the response required to overcome it.

From rapid testing and convalescent plasma therapies to COVID-19 bioresource repositories, funding from Griffin Catalyst delivered critical innovations to help fight the pandemic. Griffin was also instrumental in architecting Operation Warp Speed‘s accelerated vaccine development—delivering safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines in record time and helping to save many millions of lives.