SFARI

The SPARK Research Match Expansion RFA is an effort to engage with and increase research participation by individuals whose genetic ancestries have been undersampled in clinical research. Funding will provide per-person participant incentives (e.g., gift cards) for participation in projects that utilize SPARK Research Match to recruit participants into new research studies or to broaden participation in ongoing Research Match studies.

Grants awarded through this RFA were intended to develop and validate outcome measures that are suitable for use in intervention studies that target the core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder. Such measures should provide objective data with strong psychometric properties, be scalable for use in large, multisite studies, not be unduly burdensome to participants and families, and have evident clinical relevance. They would ideally capture naturalistic rather than laboratory behavior and be applicable to subjects across a wide range of ages and levels of functioning.

SFARI is accepting applications for funding of Patient Advocacy Group Family Conferences, with a focus on groups in the Simons Searchlight community. This funding is intended to support and enhance the research component of conferences, from scientist presentations to in-person research opportunities for families. It is open to both patient advocacy groups (PAGs) with well-established conferences as well as those in early years of convening families and connecting to science. As they plan their conferences, we encourage PAGs to connect with the SFARI science team who may be able to facilitate connections to scientists with whom to explore possible conference involvement.

Grants awarded through this RFA were intended to advance our understanding of the genetic basis of autism, and in particular the potential role of missense and in-frame deletion variants in conferring risk. Investigators who are interested in developing medium- or high-throughput screens to test the functional effects of missense and in-frame deletion variants identified in the Simons Simplex Collection (SSC) and other autism collections were encouraged to apply.

This RFA sought proposals that take advantage of the unique combination of biospecimens and rich phenotypic information collected by Simons VIP. Although SFARI was open to many different approaches, we gave priority to those that aim to accomplish a comprehensive characterization of RNA expression differences and correlate such expression patterns with phenotypes. Furthering the ability to include genomic analysis was considered be an additional strength. The data produced in this effort was later made available to the research community.