Today, the National Institutes of Health announced $28 million in funding for research that will improve the measures used to target, develop and evaluate new therapies for autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Currently, autism is diagnosed and treated based on information gathered from clinical assessments and parent questionnaires. The Autism Biomarker Consortium will add to this knowledge by developing more-objective tools to measure social behavior. These will include the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain function, eye-tracking technology to measure visual attention and automated recording techniques to assess behavior and speech.
The consortium’s larger goals include identifying biological markers (biomarkers) that can be used as targets for technologies and treatments. Its ultimate goal is precision medicine — an emerging approach to treatment that takes into account each person’s genetics and needs.
“The heterogeneity in people with an ASD makes it imperative that we find more precisely diagnosed groups of research subjects so that we can objectively evaluate the clinical effects of an intervention,” comments National Institute of Mental Health Director Thomas Insel. “This consortium project will develop reliable tools and measures that clinical researchers can use to assess potential treatments.”
Autism Speaks collaborated with the National Institute of Mental Health and other consortium partners – including the Foundation for the NIH, the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) and the European Autism Interventions-A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications (EU-AIMS) – to support the larger autism biomarker initiative that gave arise to this project. In addition, Autism Speaks remains engaged in biomarker research as a major partner in EU-AIMS.
James McPartland, of Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, will serve as the project’s principal investigator. Over the next four years, his team will recruit preschool and school-age children to participate in the national multi-center study
Research sites will include Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut; Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Washington, Seattle; and Boston Children’s Hospital.
For more information about the study, including participation, visit www.asdbiomarkers.org and/or email asdbiomarkers@yale.edu
All the information produced by the project will be made available for other researchers to view and analyze through the NIH-funded National Database for Autism Research and the NIMH Repository and Genomics Resource.
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