Research Award – Request for Applications 2020

The goal of the Research Award was to provide support for investigation of key unresolved research questions in autism, particularly those that connect genetic etiologies to brain function and behavior. SFARI welcomed risk and novelty in Research Award proposals, but potential impact on the autism research field will be the most important criterion. Competitive applications had preliminary data or other relevant groundwork that justified substantial investment in the proposed topic.

While SFARI remained open to persuasive arguments for the relevance of any particular project, below were a few examples of types of research questions that address SFARI’s overarching goals:

• Biological convergence: Given the ever-growing list of genetic risk factors for ASD, it will be important to explore whether biological convergence occurs at the molecular, cellular, circuit or behavioral levels. When convergence is observed, how does it relate to other levels of biological complexity and inform potential opportunities for intervention?
• Developmental trajectories: How do risk factors for ASD affect biological systems across different stages of development? What are the critical time points, and do they differ by biological mechanism or genetic etiology? How does this inform efforts to develop interventions?
• Major hypotheses: A number of intriguing hypotheses merit rigorous testing of their validity and generalizability, in addition to suitability for therapeutic follow-up. Examples include excitatory-inhibitory neural imbalance¹; etiological roles for sensory dysfunction in the development of social phenotypes in autism, and causative roles of certain cell types or brain areas, such as glutamatergic cortical neurons; or the striatum.

The above-mentioned topics were neither exhaustive nor exclusionary but were illustrative of key research issues in autism that were appropriate for investigation through a Research Award.