When Google founder said his funding to Parkinson's disease research is personal

Google co-founder Sergey Brin has said that his multi-billion dollar donations to fund Parkinson's disease research is deeply personal because he carries a genetic mutation linked to the disease that also affected his late mother. Brin, whose mother Eugenia Brin was diagnosed with Parkinson's more than two decades ago, has donated more than $2 billion to support research into the neurological disorder. “This work is personal because it starts with Parkinson’s disease, and I carry one of the genetic mutations discovered, the G2019S mutation to the LRKK2 gene,” Sergey Brin wrote in an email to Forbes in 2025. “This work led to the discovery of a new GBA1 gene variant that increases the risk of PD [Parkinson’s disease] in people of African ancestry.