Recent Breakthroughs in ASD
- Charis Eng, MD, PhD, Cleveland Clinic Chair of Genomic Medicine Institute, has found that a cancer susceptibility gene (PTEN) is related to autism and increased head circumference.
- David Katz, PhD, head of ICARE's Basic and Translation Science component, is pioneering research on the neurobiology of Rett syndrome, an ASD with a known genetic cause, and is spearheading the translation of basic science discoveries into clinical trials of potential new therapies for this disorder and other ASDs.
- Jonathan Haines, PhD, is developing methods to identify subgroups of autism that may help in understanding the genetic influences on autism.
- Barbara Lewis, PhD, Professor and speech pathologist, and Mandel School professor Gerald Mahoney, PhD, received a federally funded grant to train speech pathologists and social workers in ASD.
- Roberto Galan, PhD, is examining how neuronal activity in specific brain circuits is related to epilepsy, a highly frequent medical condition associated with ASD.
- Hoonkyo Suh, PhD, will examine the role that aberrant neural circuits in the hippocampus play in the development and progression of ASD.
- Anthony Wynshaw-Boris, MD, PhD, has developed mouse and induced pluripotent stem cell models for autism caused by early brain enlargement.
- Mark Griswold, PhD, Director of MRI Research at Case Western Reserve University, has pioneered a new brain imaging method termed “fingerprinting,” that markedly improves the accuracy of non-invasively quantifying specific components of brain tissue.