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The UK\u2019s Advanced<\/span> Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) was established in 2023 with the goal of pursuing \u201chigh-risk, high-reward\u201d moonshots in sectors ranging from bolstering food security to new ways of ramping up human immunity.<\/p>\n With more than \u00a31 billion (about $1.3 billion) worth of government funding earmarked between now and 2030, one of ARIA\u2019s most ambitious programs is a \u00a369 million initiative that aims to develop more tailored ways of modulating the human brain. The hope is to eventually address an entire range of disorders, from epilepsy to Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/p>\n Reports have previously estimated that this suite of neurological conditions costs the UK economy tens of billions of dollars each year. According to ARIA program director Jacques Carolan, the unifying link is that they are all disorders of brain circuitry.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes there are circuits that are overconnected, that are underconnected, there\u2019s different brain regions that are at play, there\u2019s different cell types,\u201d Carolan said, speaking at WIRED Health in London on April 16. \u201cOur current set of interventions just don\u2019t have the precision we need. The vision of the program is, \u2018Can we build more precise neurotechnologies to interface at the circuit level?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n So far, ARIA\u2019s broad-brush approach to this particular moonshot has seen them fund 19 different teams. They\u2019re working on ideas ranging from the use of ultrasound as a novel way to \u201cbiotype\u201d a particular patient\u2019s brain, to unique methods of deep brain stimulation that could both protect and regenerate different brain regions.<\/p>\n At WIRED Health, Carolan highlighted the potential of ultrasound technologies not only to modulate the brain, but to allow scientists to obtain new information about the brain\u2019s circuitry in a particular patient. One ARIA-funded team at Imperial College London is working on a project combining ultrasound and gene therapy to try to image gene expression in real-time in neurons, potentially enabling scientists to get a far more detailed picture of why certain brain networks are malfunctioning.<\/p>\n Over the past 25 years, the idea of implanting electrodes deep within the brain and using them to stimulate a particular region, known as the basal ganglia, has emerged as a novel treatment for patients with advanced forms of Parkinson\u2019s disease. It has provided a new avenue for managing motor symptoms when drug treatments no longer work. In future, Carolan claims, similar approaches could be used for a range of other debilitating neurological conditions, a concept which he views as the future of neurotherapeutics.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat people have discovered is that the same technology can actually be used to treat potentially things like depression, addiction, epilepsy, a whole series of intractable conditions,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s proof that we can have platform technologies that can address a broad range of conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the lofty nature of ARIA\u2019s goals, many have questioned how to evaluate whether its programs ultimately succeed or fail. But as Kathleen Fisher, ARIA\u2019s CEO, pointed out at WIRED Health, there may well be downstream benefits of these research investments which are completely unexpected.<\/p>\n Fisher, who previously worked at Darpa, the US Department of Defense agency on which ARIA has been modeled, noted the high-impact potential of early government investments. In 2013, Darpa awarded a grant for up to $25 million to facilitate the development of vaccine platforms that could be developed with unprecedented speed.<\/p>\n \u201cThat company was Moderna,\u201d Fisher recalled. \u201cThat technology was mRNA, technology that came online just in time for Covid.\u201d The subsequent rollout of these vaccines went on to save countless deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Fisher\u2019s goal is that by the early 2030s, ARIA will have already begun to show \u201cseedlings of societal impact\u201d either in its brain research or another area of focus that make it a no-brainer for the UK government to renew the agency\u2019s funding.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might be that we\u2019re starting to see trials that show we can do [brain] circuit-level interventions in a way that doesn\u2019t require surgery,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cWill we get all the way in seven years? Probably not, but we could have enough evidence that it\u2019s going to be possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n