Texas Children's Hospital in Houston has announced a $50 million gift from Jan and Dan Duncan to establish a collaborative institute to study and treat pediatric neurological disorders.

The gift will support the creation and development of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute, the first dedicated facility to use a multidisciplinary approach to understand unique aspects of a child's brain structure, development patterns, and related diseases. A core initiative of the hospital's previously announced Vision 2010 expansion project, the institute will recruit chemists, biochemists, neurobiologists, geneticists, physicists, computer scientists, and mathematicians to work on research, education, and identification of new treatments for pediatric neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy, Rett syndrome, cerebral palsy, and learning disorders. The institute also will conduct studies that have implications for adult conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and inherited balance disorders.

Worldwide, one billion people suffer from disorders that afflict the nervous system; in the United States alone, fifty million children and adults are affected. "Having diverse expertise in one place along with a strong infrastructure of core facilities will create an efficient research environment where the technology and tools are readily available to allow researchers to quickly conduct a multitude of biochemical, genetic, and pharmalogical tests," said Huda Zoghbi, M.D., a professor of pediatrics, neuroscience, and genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine and director of the new institute. "[This should help to accelerate] the pace of discovery [and] increase the likelihood of bringing novel therapies to patients."