Molecular Therapeutics Initiative

The UC Berkeley Molecular Therapeutics Initiative (MTI) launched in 2024 with a $10 million gift to reinvent drug discovery at the interface of academia and biotech. It brings together UC Berkeley labs, external academic institutes, biopharma companies and venture capital partners, with a focus on cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and rare genetic disorders.

MTI awards research funding through its Innovator Awards for ideas that can lead to differentiated therapies, and houses core platforms for small-molecule screening, medicinal chemistry, chemoproteomics, metabolomics, high-throughput synthesis, targeted protein degradation and protein engineering. It also supports academic-industry collaborations, such as a 2026 partnership with BioMarin on rare genetic conditions.