SFARI

SPARK is a SFARI initiative intended to recruit, engage and retain a community of 50,000 individuals with autism, and their family members, in the United States. This research cohort includes children and adults who span the full autism spectrum and individuals of all socio-demographic backgrounds. Through this RFA, SFARI supported additional U.S.-based clinical sites for the purpose of recruiting individuals with ASD and their family members to participate in SPARK.

Grants awarded through this RFA were intended to advance our understanding of the impact of activation of the innate immune system on behavioral, circuit, synaptic and neuronal functions in order to understand the consequences of infection and immune activation on autism-related behaviors. Experiments were expected to include physiologically relevant activation/inhibition of the innate immune system in animal models of autism and to focus on neuronal, synaptic and circuit function.

This RFA was intended to advance our understanding of the circuit basis for behavioral and cognitive alterations relevant to autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The goal was to determine the downstream consequences of autism-associated genetic perturbations on neural circuitry, with an emphasis on how collections of neurons operate in concert during autism-relevant behaviors.

This RFA sought proposals that aimed to comprehensively analyze the behavior of mouse models that have been generated with targeted genetic mutations based on strong human genetic evidence implicating them in autism spectrum disorders. We expected investigators to test at least three genetic models in the same background strain (C57BL/6). In addition, investigators needed to analyze the behavior of one of the selected autism mouse models in a different genetic background, such as a hybrid background from two inbred strains