TGen Joins Arizona Autism Center for Major Collaboration
April 2, 2003
The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the
Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center (SARRC) today
announced a collaboration aimed at determining the underlying
causes of autism, a leading childhood developmental disorder.
The collaboration brings together the sophisticated clinical
efforts of SARRC with the scientific expertise of TGen in an effort
to help the children and families impacted by autism, said Dr.
Dietrich Stephan, director of TGen's Neurogenomics Research
Program.
"Parents want answers. They want to know why such things happen to
their children and how to help. This agreement brings together some
of the best minds working on those two questions into one
collaborative effort. We hope that this collaboration will make
Arizona the national hub for autism research," said Stephan.
While it is not possible to predict how long such efforts will
take, Stephan ultimately believes the collaborative model teaming
TGen with SARRC is the way to go.
"The interplay between patients, their families and their
clinicians with geneticists such as myself will produce results,"
Stephan said.
Stephan and his SARRC collaborators will actively seek patients
and families willing to participate in long-term studies aimed at
fully annotating clinical pedigrees and cataloguing exposure to
toxins. This systematic approach for capturing all the variables
may ultimately lead to the identification of genome alterations
which interact with the environment to predispose one to autism,
said Stephan.
While autism remains a mysterious and devastating disease, its
causes most likely combine genetic and environmental factors, said
Dr. Raun Melmed, SARRC medical director.
"By looking at underlying biological reasons for autism, the way
it manifests itself as a child develops and potential environmental
factors, we expect to find important answers for these children,
their families and the community," Dr. Melmed said.
Autism affects one in 250 children under the age of 10, said
Denise Resnik, SARRC board president and co-founder.
"More than 5,000 children with autism currently attend school in
Maricopa County," Resnik said.
This local collaboration marks important progress for the
institute, said TGen President and Scientific Director Dr. Jeffrey
Trent.
"We at TGen see this as a real opportunity to utilize
sophisticated genomic research to help families impacted by this
still-mysterious disease. By joining forces with the doctors,
researchers and families of SARRC, we can make progress faster than
either would accomplish alone. This is the kind of collaboration
that we expect to utilize throughout TGen," Trent said.
Details regarding the specific scientific approach will be
announced in a few months, TGen and SARRC officials said. The
strategy will certainly apply state-of-the-art genomic and
proteomic tools to make inroads into improving diagnostics and
therapeutics for this devastating disease.
Stephan brings important experience and expertise to TGen and its
collaboration with SARRC. He leads a diverse program at TGen
focused on improving diagnostics and early disease detection, as
well as designing smart-drug therapeutics in a host of human
diseases. He is a classically trained human geneticist and
molecular biologist who has been applying state-of-the-art tools
derived from the Human Genome Project to conditions that have a
dramatic impact on our society. After a fellowship at the National
Human Genome Research Institute, Stephan built a large research
program at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington,
D.C. studying a number of pediatric cancers, inherited genetic
diseases of many types, and a large number of neurological diseases
and behavioral deficits. He chairs a large consortium of genome
profiling centers focused specifically at better understanding of
diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems.
SARRC is a Phoenix-based nonprofit organization dedicated to
autism research, education and community outreach. For more
information about SARRC, call (602) 340-8717.
The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a
non-profit biomedical research institute whose mission is to make
and translate genomic discoveries into advances in human
health.
Contact:Denise Resnik
President and Co-Founder
Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center
602-956-8834
[email protected]
