The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is pleased to announce the recipients of its Autism Rat Models Consortium 2.0 grants. This grant program will expand on the work done by the original Autism Rat Models Consortium.
SFARI is pleased to announce that Simons Searchlight has released new data from over 5,600 individuals with autism and/or a related neurodevelopmental disorder.
Large-scale genetic studies have now uncovered more than 200 genes that can be linked to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) or autism. Many of those genes are implicated through gene-damaging heterozygous de novo mutations that result in haploinsufficiency of the affected gene. Identifying such genes opens the door for the development of gene-specific therapeutics like gene replacement therapy. However, gene replacement therapy comes with many challenges, one of them being the risk of overexpression. Therefore, therapeutics that could result in the upregulation of the remaining healthy allele and do not interfere with endogenous regulatory mechanisms of gene expression would be ideal.
SFARI is pleased to launch a new RFA that aims to provide researchers with the support needed to allocate time and personnel toward working with and publishing from previously collected data.
As the largest-ever collection of data from youth with autism who have high support needs, this resource will accelerate research into an understudied population.
Autism BrainNet is pleased to announce the release of genetic data for 27 new brain samples. The data release brings the total number of brain samples with available genetic data to 273.
SFARI is pleased to announce it will fund five projects investigating the influence of autism-associated risk genes on early neurodevelopment and links to later circuit-level functional outcomes. These awards will provide up to $3.6 million over 4 years to each team of researchers.
Social behavior is a complex and dynamic process shaped by movement, coordination and physical touch. A new study in Cell written by members of SFARI's Autism Rat Consortium introduces s-DANNCE, a machine-learning system that can map the fine-scale movements of freely interacting rats in three dimensions. By applying s-DANNCE to seven genetic rat models of autism, researchers have uncovered distinct social phenotypes, offering new insights into the diversity of autism-related behaviors.
On January 27–28, the Simons Foundation held the third annual meeting of the SFARI Sex Differences Collaboration (SSDC). Formed in 2021, this collaboration seeks to understand the male bias in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which could provide important clues to ASD’s etiology.
The Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) is pleased to announce the funding of 23 projects as part of its 2024 Pilot and Pilot Progression awards. Awards from the 2024 cycle will provide over $9 million in total funding to 18 Pilot awards and 5 Pilot Progression awards.