英国的 Advanced Research and Innovation Agency（ARIA）成立于2023年，旨在推动涵盖粮食安全与人类免疫等领域的高风险、高回报月球射击式计划。该机构获得政府在从现在到2030年期间超过£1 billion（约$1.3 billion）的资助，其中最具雄心的计划之一是一项£69 million的方案，目标是开发更精确的方法来调节人类大脑，长期目标是应对从癫痫到阿兹海默症等疾病。ARIA表示，这些神经系统疾病每年给英国经济带来数百亿美元的成本，而它们的共同点在于大脑回路中的共享问题。

截至目前，该计划已资助19个团队，探索的方向从基于超声波的方法来对患者的大脑进行「biotype」分类，到可保护或再生脑区的新型深部脑刺激。ARIA项目主任 Jacques Carolan 认为，当前的介入过于不精确，因为这些疾病可能涉及过度连接或连接不足的回路、不同脑区以及不同细胞类型，因此目标是建立回路层级的神经技术。Imperial College London 的一个团队正结合超声波与基因治疗，实时成像神经元中的基因表达；Carolan 也指出，深部脑刺激在帕金森氏症中经过过去25年的精炼，具有作为平台的潜力，最终可被改造用于抑郁、成瘾、癫痫及其他难治性疾病。

更广泛的含义是，ARIA 正押注早期研究能带来意想不到的下游效益，类似 Darpa 在2013年提供的最高达$25 million的资助，为 Moderna 的 mRNA 疫苗技术奠定了基础。Kathleen Fisher 表示，该机构希望在2030年代初展示「社会影响的幼苗」，以便英国政府续拨资金，即使在7年期限内全面成功的可能性也不大。她说，一个现实的近期里程碑，是证明大脑回路层级的介入有可能在不需手术的情况下实现；如果研究开始转化为试验和可衡量的临床进展，这就足以证明持续投资是合理的。

The UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency (ARIA) was established in 2023 to pursue high-risk, high-reward moonshots across areas such as food security and human immunity. Backed by more than £1 billion (about $1.3 billion) in government funding between now and 2030, one of its most ambitious efforts is a £69 million program aimed at developing more precise ways to modulate the human brain, with the long-term goal of addressing disorders from epilepsy to Alzheimer’s. ARIA says these neurological conditions impose costs of tens of billions of dollars each year on the UK economy and are unified by shared problems in brain circuitry.

So far, the program has funded 19 teams exploring approaches that range from ultrasound-based methods to “biotype” a patient’s brain to new forms of deep brain stimulation that could protect or regenerate brain regions. Jacques Carolan, ARIA’s program director, argued that current interventions are too imprecise because disorders can involve overconnected or underconnected circuits, different regions, and different cell types, and that the goal is to build circuit-level neurotechnologies. One Imperial College London team is combining ultrasound and gene therapy to image gene expression in real time in neurons, while Carolan also pointed to the potential of deep brain stimulation, a technology refined over the past 25 years in Parkinson’s disease, as a platform that could eventually be adapted to depression, addiction, epilepsy, and other intractable conditions.

The broader implication is that ARIA is betting on early research to produce unexpected downstream benefits, similar to Darpa’s 2013 grant of up to $25 million that helped lay groundwork for Moderna’s mRNA vaccine technology. Kathleen Fisher said the agency hopes to show “seedlings of societal impact” by the early 2030s so the UK government will renew funding, even if full success is unlikely within a 7-year horizon. She said a realistic near-term milestone would be evidence that brain circuit-level interventions may be possible without surgery, which would be enough to justify continued investment if the research begins to translate into trials and measurable clinical progress.