On May 21, 2019, the recipients of the SFARI Bridge to Independence Award gathered at the Simons Foundation to discuss their scientific findings and plans in autism research.

Funds donated by SFARI to Gordon Research Conferences will now be allocated to support attendance of eligible early-career (pre-tenure) women, early-career trainees from historically underrepresented groups and scientists from the following ethnic and racial groups: Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.

SFARI is pleased to announce its 2020 Collaboration on Sex Differences in Autism request for applications. Collaborations are a new funding mechanism that will provide substantive and stable funding support to multidisciplinary teams of investigators tackling critical issues in the autism research field.

This issue of the SFARI newsletter includes: (1) Zebrafish lines added to SFARI resources, (2) 2019 Novel Outcome Measures in Autism Spectrum Disorder awardees, (3) Transition in SFARI directorship, (4) A joint variant call-set for all Simons Simplex Collection whole-genome sequences, (5) SFARI Investigators elected to the National Academy of Medicine, (6) SFARI blog: Paul Wang, “The need for objective outcome measures to advance intervention research in autism”, (7) SFARI blog: Wendy Chung and John Spiro, “Simons Searchlight: Rebranding and expanding the program”, (8) SFARI spring 2019 science meeting report, (9) Highlights of SFARI-funded research, (10) 2020 Bridge to Independence Award – Request for applications, (11) Upcoming lecture: Jason Lerch, “Autism, autisms or neurodevelopmental disorders?”

SFARI is now curating a set of zebrafish lines to study autism spectrum disorder. This includes mutant lines for 12 ASD risk genes, four of which are currently available to researchers and eight that will be available later this year.

SFARI director Louis Reichardt will leave SFARI this coming October.

SFARI held its 15th science meeting April 7–9, 2019. Over 100 SFARI investigators, collaborators and foundation staff convened to discuss recent findings on the genetics, molecular- and system-level mechanisms and clinical aspects of autism spectrum disorder. In addition to keynote and session presentations, the meeting hosted a panel on animal behavior and demonstrations of online tools for visualizing and analyzing data sets relevant for autism research.

In this blog post, Paul Wang discusses the importance of supporting the development and validation of objective clinical outcome measures for autism. He also provides an overview of four new SFARI-funded projects that aim to develop such tools.

SFARI has awarded four grants in response to the 2019 Novel Outcome Measures in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) request for applications. These grants will support the development and validation of outcome measures aimed at assessing core symptoms of ASD and behavioral changes following treatment.

Three recent studies – two by Kristopher Kahle and Igor Medina, and the third by Xin Tang, Mriganka Sur and Rudolf Jaenisch – explored regulatory mechanisms that modulate KCC2 function during development as well as ways to potentially therapeutically enhance the expression of this chloride cotransporter.