Boston Children’s Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College Receive Award for International Autism Research Project

By Integrative Practitioner Staff 

Last week, Boston Children’s Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Baylor College received grants for up to $17.5 million each from Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) and became participants in the Innovative Medicine and Precision Approaches to Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Network. The IMPACT Network is an ARIA-funded international project that brings together 12 clinical sites across the U.S., U.K., and Canada to collaborate on speeding up clinical trial readiness and driving therapeutic innovation for autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). ARIA is a collaborative initiative that leverages advancements in research, insights, and technologies across multiple scientific fields to drive discovery and support the development of treatment options for people with profound autism and the broader autism community. 

“By building a coordinated, short-term study of this scale, we can accelerate clinical trial readiness for genetic neurodevelopmental conditions and children with profound autism, who are underserved,” said Dr. Siddharth Srivastava, pediatric neurologist and neurodevelopmental disability specialist at Boston Children’s, in a press release. 

The initiative aims to describe the development of six different genetic conditions associated with autism and related NDDs, including disorders related to mutations in the genes ARID1B, CHD2, GRIN2B, RNU4-2, SCN2A, and SLC6A1. By collecting data consistently across all participating sites, the IMPACT Network seeks to overcome long-standing challenges that have hindered autism research. By aligning efforts across institutions, the goal is to enable faster, more effective clinical trials and bring promising therapies to children sooner. 

The award builds on ARIA’s prior support for Boston Children’s, including a grant for Dr. Mustafa Sahin to serve as co-lead of the Clinical Coordinating Center, the central hub of the IMPACT Network that oversees clinical research operations and provides administrative leadership.  

For the Duncan Neurological Research Institute (NRI) at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College, joining the initiative reflects the organizations’ long-time investment in autism research and clinical care. Through the initiative, researchers at Baylor and Texas Children’s will participate in a short-term natural history and clinical endpoint study designed to better understand how autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions progress over time in children with profound autism. 

“The ARIA initiative’s support could not come at a better time, as our understanding of autism has advanced so that we now stand at an exciting precipice, ready to translate that progress into clinical trials and life-changing treatments for patients and families,” said Dr. Jimmy Holder, associate professor in pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Principal investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital, in a separate press release. “Joining the ARIA IMPACT Network will allow Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital to accelerate our breakthrough work to bring effective therapies to people with autism and those with related neurodevelopmental disorders.”