$1.5 Million, 3 more years down genetics rathole.

[Guest guest]

Grant to Yale from Simons Foundation to Explore Genetic Causes of Autism

http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/07-03-07-03.all.html

New Haven, Conn. — Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine Child

Study Center and 10 other institutions will share a $10 million gift

from and Marilyn Simons of The Simons Foundation to create a

databank of DNA samples from autism patients around the country.

The goal is to collect a total of 3,000 samples from autism patients

around the country to help identify different variants of autism and

develop treatments. The principal investigators at Yale, Ami Klin and

State, M.D., have received $1.2 million for three years to

collect DNA samples from patients completing clinical evaluations or

research protocols at the Autism Program at the Yale Child Study Center.

Autism is a complex brain disorder that inhibits a person's ability to

communicate and develop social relationships, and it is often

accompanied by extreme behavioral challenges. Autism Spectrum

Disorders are diagnosed in one in 150 children in the United States

and affects four times as many boys as girls. Researchers do not know

how many subtypes of autism exist. Klin, the Associate

Professor of Child Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale, said the gene

data might help identify meaningful subtypes of autism, thus advancing

knowledge that is critical for behavioral and brain studies, and

promoting treatments that will likely be more specific to an

individual's variant of autism.

Other universities participating in the DNA databank collection

include Harvard, Columbia, Emory, McGill, Boston, Washington

University, the University of Washington, the University of

Illinois-Chicago and the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Simons Consortium represents the most comprehensive and detailed

effort to date to relate genotypic and phenotypic data in autism.

Subjects completing the protocol will have the most refined genotypic

analyses that can then be related to a wealth of data on the affected

individuals themselves and on their family members. The Consortium

will house the data in a centralized repository that will be

accessible to researchers within and outside the institutions involved

in this effort.

The Simons Foundation is a private family foundation based in New York

City. The primary mission is to fund advanced research in science and

mathematics. A secondary mission is to help children with learning

differences. Bridging these two areas, the Simons Foundation has

recently undertaken a major initiative supporting research into autism

and its treatment. The Foundation aims to spend $100 million long-term

to find a cure for the developmental disorder.

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Anyone know how much money is spent searching down the genetic causes

of alcohol fetal syndrome? lead poisoning?

Lenny