University awarded $8M for brain cell database

The University of California, Irvine has been awarded an $8 million grant for the creation of a database of brain cell activity.

The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the university will house one of six brain-cell databases around the U.S.

The grant from the National Institutes of Health will allow researchers to study brain cell activity in motor neuron disorders such as Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as ALS, and build a detailed collection of these diseases' signatures.

The school says those signatures will be used to identify cell targets for new drug treatments.

The five others participating in the project are Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease; University of California, San Francisco; Johns Hopkins University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.