Year 2

The goal of this CIRM translational award is to generate a hiPSC-based drug-screening platform to identify potential therapies or biomarkers for autism spectrum disorders. In this second year we have made significant progress toward this goal by working on validating several neuronal phenotypes derived from iPSCs from idiopathic and syndromic autistic patients. We also made significant progress in order to optimize a synaptic readout for the screening platform. This step was important to speed up drug discovery. Using Rett syndrome iPSC-derived neurons as a prototype, we showed that we could rescue defect in synaptogenesis using a collection of FDA-approved drugs. Finally, we have initiated our analyses on global gene expression, from several neurons and progenitor cells derived from controls and autistic patients. We expect to find pathways that are altered in subgroups of patients, defined by specific clinical phenotypes.