The National Institutes of Health has awarded Dr. Daniel Geschwind, professor of neurology, psychiatry and genetics, and director of the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment, a five-year, $10 million grant to continue his research on the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and to expand his investigations to include the genetics of autism in African Americans.
The new network grant, which will fund collaborative work by Geschwind and experts at other autism centers around the country, is part of the NIH's Autism Centers of Excellence program, which was launched in 2007 to support coordinated research into the causes of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the discovery of new treatments.
Geschwind's award will allow him to build on his earlier work identifying genetic variants associated with an increased susceptibility to autism while adding an important new emphasis. The research network he leads — which also includes scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University and Yale University — aims to recruit at least 600 African American families who have a child diagnosed with an ASD for genetic testing.
He will look for gene variants associated with autism in Americans with African ancestry and then test the genetic risk factors identified in European populations to see what role they may play in the disorder in people of African descent.
