Man Donates $9M to Harvard and MIT to Study Cannabis
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]N[/dropcap]ew York City-based investor Bob Broderick is donating $9 million dollars to Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to study cannabis and the brain. It’s one of the largest private cannabis donations ever made.
The millionaire put his money to use for a cause he believes in. “I saw an opportunity to take a kind of a leadership position in getting these two great cultural institutions involved in the discussion of cannabis in the country,” Broderick told WBUR. “People take risks when they say, ‘I’m going to start doing cannabis work. For a young researcher at MIT or Harvard to say, ‘I’m going to pivot my career and study the effects of cannabis,’ I don’t think that’s something that would have happened five years ago.”
About $1 million of the donation will go towards research projects under Professor Myriam Heiman, leader of the lab at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Heiman is studying connections between cannabis and schizophrenia.
Some of the other research projects involve animal experimentation with mice. Investigators observe synapses in a mouse brain in order to assess what cannabis does on a molecular level.
Another portion of the donation will go towards McGovern Institute for Brain Research, which is in a wing of the same MIT building. Led by Professor John Gabrieli, scientists will explore the effects of cannabis in people with schizophrenia and autism. Gabrieli and his team want to find out if cannabis is more beneficial or detrimental to people with both disorders. “That’s why we need the science,” he said. “Because right now, it’s happening without the science, and it’s likely to happen all the more as marijuana becomes highly available legally in many states.
Scientific authorities have called for new research on the potential benefits and disadvantages of rising cannabis use. The National Institutes of Health have stood behind over $140 million of resources poured into research on the effects of cannabis and cannabinoids.
