SFARI

Evolving perspectives on autism
2013-09-26 17:00 - 18:15 UTC | Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium, 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10010, United States
On 26 September 2013, Catherine Lord and Steven Hyman presented conceptual frameworks for autism diagnosis and research, ranging from genetics to symptomatology, as part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series.
Eric London provided post-lecture commentary, placing the discussion in a clinical context and providing a physician’s perspective.
You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
Tremendous progress has been made in our understanding of autism, with major contributions coming from a variety of research fields, including genetics, neuroscience and psychology. The clinical definition of autism has been revamped with the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Accordingly, our concept of autism is evolving, which in turn affects the future of autism research and the development of interventions.
About the speakers:
Catherine Lord is director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, a joint project of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in partnership with New York Collaborates for Autism.
Lord is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialties in diagnosis, social and communication development, and intervention in autism. Renowned for her work in longitudinal studies of social and communicative development in autism, Lord has also contributed to the development of diagnostic instruments for autism that are now used as global research standards.
Steven Hyman is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and is Distinguished Service Professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard.
From 1996 to 2001, Hyman served as director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, where he emphasized investment in neuroscience and emerging genetic technologies and initiated a series of large practical clinical trials to inform practice. He is editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience, president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience, founding president of the International Neuroethics Society and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies.
About the commentators:
Gerald D. Fischbach is chief scientist and fellow of the Simons Foundation.
Eric London is director of the Autism Treatment Laboratory at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities.

Antibodies, behavior and cognition
2013-05-30 17:00 - 18:15
On 30 May, Betty Diamond discussed how the immune system can mediate alterations in brain development and play a role in autism, as part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series.
Alan Brown provided a post-lecture commentary and context for Diamond’s work on epidemiological studies of autism and related disorders.
You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
As neutralizers of microbial agents, antibodies are major contributors to immune competence. Occasionally, however, they act as autoantibodies, which bind to a person’s own tissue, triggering autoimmune disease. In adults, the blood-brain barrier protects the brain against autoantibodies, but that barrier is not fully competent in fetuses, allowing maternal antibodies to penetrate the fetal brain and potentially alter its development. This mechanism may contribute to some cases of autism.
About the speaker:
Betty Diamond is head of the Center for Autoimmune and Musculoskeletal Diseases at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York. Her research has focused on the induction and pathogenicity of anti-DNA antibodies in systemic lupus erythematosus. She received the American College of Rheumatology’s Distinguished Investigator Award in 2001, the Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize from the Arthritis Foundation in 2002, and the Recognition Award from the National Association of M.D.-Ph.D. Programs in 2004. Diamond was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2006.
About the commentator:
Alan S. Brown is professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University and director of the Unit in Birth Cohort Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His research has focused on prenatal exposure to infectious, immunologic, nutritional and toxic factors, and its association with risk of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism. He demonstrated earlier this year that elevated maternal C-reactive protein, an inflammatory biomarker, is related to a significantly increased risk of autism in the child. He is leading large, multi-site national birth cohort studies of prenatal biomarkers, developmental pathways and familial vulnerability based on an archived biobank and nationwide registries in Finland.

New genetic insights into autism
2013-04-25 17:00 - 18:15
On 25 April 2013, Matthew State reviewed the genetic discoveries made over the past several years in autism research and addressed challenges in the path forward — from reliable gene discovery to an actionable understanding of the disorder’s molecular underpinnings.The talk is part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series. You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
The genetics of autism has reached a tipping point. The recent focus on de novo mutations — or genetic variations not passed on from either parent — has led to systematic, highly productive gene discovery efforts. This work has begun to clarify a tremendously heterogeneous genetic architecture as well as to reveal specific genes contributing to social disability syndromes.
About the speaker:
Matthew State received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry and fellowship in child psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, Neuropsychiatric Institute. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Yale University and was a faculty member there from 2001 to 2013. He is currently chair of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
State’s lab has a long-standing interest in the contribution of rare genetic mutations to childhood neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism and Tourette syndrome. He is currently leading a large, multisite, genome-wide study of autism funded by the Simons Foundation and is playing a leadership role in the Tourette International Collaborative for Genetics and the Autism Sequencing Consortium. Among many professional honors, he has been awarded the Ruane Prize for Outstanding Research in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
