UCSF Joins Arc Institute to Advance New Therapies for Complex Diseases 

UC San Francisco has joined with UC Berkeley and Stanford University as founding scientific members of a new institute that aims to accelerate breakthroughs in complex diseases.  

The Arc Institute officially launched Dec. 15, 2021, with the goal of developing a new model for collaborative research that brings together world-class research with unconstrained funding to enable new discoveries that improve human health.  

The Palo Alto-based institute will focus on four core concepts to enable high-risk, high-reward science: curiosity-driven research, creating new career paths in science, collaborations, and support for translating discoveries into new therapies for patients. 

“The translational focus of the Institute and these new partnerships will move great ideas and insights out of the laboratory and into new companies and the clinic,” said UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood, MBBS. “It is a tremendous opportunity to bring together scientists from three premier research institutions with the resources they need to develop innovative new treatments for devastating diseases.” 

Arc investigators will include faculty at UCSF, UC Berkeley, and Stanford, as well as graduate students in these universities pursuing PhD studies at Arc labs. The institute has raised more than $650 million from founding donors, including Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of the financial services company Stripe, to fully support scientists and their research for renewable, eight-year terms. 

For further information, please see the Arc Institute launch announcement.