The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is pleased to announce its continuing support of its collaborations on sex differences in autism spectrum disorders. Launched in 2021, the SFARI Sex Differences in Autism Collaboration (SSDC) seeks to understand the reasons for the male bias in diagnoses of autism, which is four times that in females.
Each Sex Differences Collaboration is led by a director who oversees interdisciplinary, synergistic research efforts across multiple laboratories. Investigative groups within a collaboration all focus on the same conceptually unified topic but incorporate different scientific disciplines, multiple levels of analysis and robust resource-sharing practices and data-sharing infrastructure.
The awardees are listed below.
Characterization of sex differences in autism by polygenic clustering
Lauren Weiss, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco), Alexandra Havdahl, Ph.D. (Norwegian Institute of Public Health) and Tyne Miller-Fleming, Ph.D. (Vanderbilt University Medical Center)
Genetic and molecular dissection of autism sex differences
Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D. (New York University School of Medicine), Evan Eichler, Ph.D. (University of Washington), Tomasz Nowakowski, Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco) and Huda Zoghbi, M.D. (Baylor College of Medicine)
Xi, Y and the male bias in autism
David Page, M.D. (Whitehead Institute), Olivia Corradin, Ph.D. (Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Nicole Coufal, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego) and Christopher Glass, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California, San Diego)
Analysis of mechanisms underlying sex epistasis in autism
Joseph Dougherty, Ph.D.(Washington University in St. Louis), Natasha Marrus, M.D., Ph.D. (Washington University in St. Louis School of Medicine) and Sven Sandin, Ph.D. (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai)
Defining the cellular and anatomic identity, developmental trajectory and therapeutic potential of sex-differential subcortical cells and circuits in ASD
Stephan Sanders, B.M.B.S., Ph.D. (University of Oxford), Xin Jin, Ph.D. (Scripps Research Institute), Rothem Kovner, Ph.D. (Yale University), Devanand Manoli, M.D., Ph.D., Tomasz Nowakowski, Ph.D., Vikaas Sohal, M.D., Ph.D. (University of California, San Francisco), Jessica Tollkuhn, Ph.D. (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) and Donna Werling, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
