Print FriendlyScientific Initiatives
In early 2007, the Salk Board of Trustees, faculty, and administrative team developed an ambitious strategic plan detailing the Institute's scientific initiatives for the coming years. Now complete, this strategic plan identifies priorities for new areas of research and emphasizes the strengthening of highly successful existing programs.
Aging
The Glenn Center for Aging Research at the Salk Institute seeks to understand the basic molecular mechanisms that drive the aging process and to contribute scientific discoveries that can promote healthy aging for humanity.
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Biophotonics
Using the latest in imaging technology, scientists in the Waitt Advanced Biophotonics Center understand how single molecules and cells function in real time and decipher what goes wrong when they malfunction.
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Immunobiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Scientists aim to shed light on the molecular mechanisms that cause infectious disease, define key molecules involved in the body's response to injury or infection, and understand why inflammatory processes spin out of control under some circumstances.
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Leadership Challenge
To assure its ongoing position of scientific leadership, the Salk Institute has made the creation of endowed chairs a top priority. The urgency of the need has inspired Joan and Irwin Jacobs to step forward with a $10 million challenge grant to encourage donors to establish 10 endowed chairs for senior scientists.
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Metabolism
The goal is to develop new approaches to understand how metabolism is affected by food intake, age and gender. Scientists also want to identify new targets for pharmacological interventions with the potential to control weight gain, and diminish diabetic and cardiovascular complications of the metabolic syndrome.
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Neuroscience
Neurobiologists at Salk want to discover how 100 billion neurons that make up the brain develop into a functioning network. Understanding this is complete detail will ultimately provide therapeutic interventions for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and help treat strokes, addiction and schizophrenia.
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Plant Biology
Understanding how plants adapt to challenging environments will be crucial to ensuring the world's future food supply. Knowledge acquired by scientists will allow growers to engineer crops that produce greater yields, have higher nutritional value and resist disease with less environmental impact.
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Stem Cells
Salk scientists want to understand how stem cells give rise to all the different cell types in the body and how they come together to form tissues and organs. These remarkable cells can be used to model human diseases and determine their molecular mechanisms. This knowledge can then be exploited to develop new therapies.
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Strategic Funds
The Institute has developed funding opportunities designed to provide crucial resources in five specific areas, including: the Innovation Fund, the Technology and Instrumentation Fund, the Collaborations and Visiting Scholars Fund, the Education and Advanced Training Fund, and Endowed Faculty Chairs.
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Systems Biology
A growing understanding of how genes and proteins work enables Salk scientists to take an increasingly global approach to addressing biological questions. This will lead to rapid advances in understanding disease-causing alterations in the molecular networks underlying metabolic, physiological and behavioral processes.
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