The Arc Institute has announced its launch as a nonprofit research institution aimed at advancing scientific breakthroughs in complex diseases with investments totaling more than $650 million from founding donors including Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison.

Co-founded by Collison, University of California, Berkeley assistant professor of bioengineering Patrick Hsu, and Stanford University assistant professor of biochemistry Silvana Konermann, the institute will work in collaboration with the two institutions and the University of California, San Francisco on research into diseases including neurodegeneration, cancer, and immune dysfunction. Collison, Hsu, and Konermann previously collaborated on Fast Grants, which was launched in early 2020 to provide expedited funding to scientists working on COVID-19-related projects. Konermann will serve as the institute’s inaugural director, while Hsu will lead the development of Technology Centers and the Translation Program.

Headquartered in the Stanford Research Park in Palo Alto, the institute will pioneer a new model for collaborative research that integrates long-term and unconstrained funding for ambitious science, centers for the rapid development of biotechnologies, and the scientific excellence of world-class research universities. To support both exploratory and long-term research, the institute will hire Arc Core Investigators for renewable eight-year appointments and provide full salary and research support for their laboratories, freeing investigators from the challenges of incessant grant applications and fundraising. An Affiliate Investigator program will support faculty primarily located at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCSF.

In addition, by bringing together the Core Investigator and Technology Center laboratories within Arc headquarters, the institute aims to increase the collision frequency of new ideas and joint projects and make it easy for biologists to work with technology developers to apply advanced tools.

“At Arc, we want to take full advantage of the ongoing Cambrian explosion in experimental and computational technologies,” said Hsu. “In addition to creating new collaborative training models, we are also committed to creating attractive career paths for scientists and engineers beyond their training period to focus on technology development.”

(Photo credit: Jeff Peters/Vantage Point Photography)