Partnership will cover telehealth, scientific and technical development, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, UC Davis

UC Davis Health System has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, to partner to improve the health and well-being of its residents through the exchange of ideas, data and research on telehealth, scientific and technical development, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Sinaloa has partnered with UC Davis because of the health system’s internationally recognized leadership in telehealth technology and neurodevelopmental research, said Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, who directs the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities and community engagement for the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center.

Approximately 27 percent of Sinaloa’s population lives in rural settings. The government and secretariat of health of Sinaloa have pledged to strengthen the state’s health infrastructure and to increase access to quality health care using telehealth technology, particularly for populations residing in remote rural areas.

“The government of Sinaloa is interested in creating the infrastructure to support telemedicine and telehealth services to significantly improve access to primary-care services for its nearly 3 million residents,” said Aguilar-Gaxiola, a professor of clinical internal medicine.

“They also would like UC Davis to share its expertise in autism and fragile X syndrome with Mexican health professionals and families to improve early identification, diagnosis and treatment,” Aguilar-Gaxiola said. “A third goal is to foster scientific and technical development to support health education primarily aimed at primary-care settings.”

UC Davis is a national leader in extending access to health-care services to rural and underserved areas through telehealth. The UC Davis Center for Health and Technology uses high-speed data lines linked to video units to connect large, urban medical centers with community hospitals and clinics. The technology allows specialists and subspecialists to consult with community physicians and their patients via live, interactive videoconferencing.

Similarly, the UC Davis MIND Institute is internationally known for its leading-edge research into neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders and fragile X syndrome. The institute’s world renowned scientists engage in research to find improved treatments, as well as  causes and cures, for autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), fragile X syndrome, Tourette syndrome and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

The MOU with Sinaloa is the most recent affiliation between UC Davis Health System and a Mexican entity.

Earlier this year, health system leaders traveled to Mexico City to forge a similar MOU with the Instituto Carlos Slim de la Salud (the Carlos Slim Health Institute), A.C. That agreement is focused on raising awareness of mental-health issues and sharing useful and innovative information to enable the early identification of autism and fragile X syndrome. Founded in 2007, the institute promotes research, develops initiatives and funds projects to address health challenges that affect Mexico and the broader Latin American region.

And in 2010, UC Davis Health System partnered with Shriners Hospital for Children — Northern California and the Mexican Health Ministry to establish a burn fellowship program for physicians from Mexico. The 12-month fellowship program trains two physicians each year in resuscitation and burn-care management, reconstructive surgery and clinical research.

UC Davis Health System is improving lives and transforming health care by providing excellent patient care, conducting groundbreaking research, fostering innovative, interprofessional education, and creating dynamic, productive partnerships with the community. The academic health system includes one of the country’s best medical schools, a 631-bed acute-care teaching hospital, an 800-member physician’s practice group and the new Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. It is home to a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center, an international neurodevelopmental institute, a stem cell institute and a comprehensive children’s hospital. Other nationally prominent centers focus on advancing telemedicine, improving vascular care, eliminating health disparities and translating research findings into new treatments for patients. Together, they make UC Davis a hub of innovation that is transforming health for all. For more information, visit healthsystem.ucdavis.edu.

Autism Speaks recognizes three MIND Institute investigations for research excellence.

UC Davis professor Sally Ozonoff's autism research is among the best in the world in 2011

Three UC Davis MIND Institute research studies are among the Top 10 Research Achievements of 2011 identified by the world’s largest autism science and advocacy organization.

Autism Speaks recognized the MIND Institute for its autism investigations in a broad range of fields of inquiry, including epidemiology, medical microbiology and immunology, and the rate of reoccurrence of the condition among siblings.

The organization announced the Autism Speaks Top 10 Autism Research Achievements of 2011 on its website.

“This recognition reflects the breadth, depth and strength of the transformational research conducted at the UC Davis MIND Institute,” said Claire Pomeroy, vice chancellor for human health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine at UC Davis. “The MIND Institute’s investigations are creating new insights that today are changing the lives of people with autism and their families in the United States and around the world.”

The three studies include research led by Paul Ashwood, assistant professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, titled “Elevated plasma cytokines in autism spectrum disorders provide evidence of immune dysfunction and are associated with impaired behavioral outcome.” It was published in January 2011 in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.

The research found significantly altered adaptive cellular immune function in children with autism spectrum disorders that may reflect dysfunctional immune activation, and that these alterations may be linked to disturbances in behavior and developmental functioning. Other UC Davis study authors include Paula Krakowiak, Irva Hertz-Picciotto, Robin Hansen, Isaac Pessah, and Judy Van de Water.

Autism Speaks acknowledged an epidemiological study on “Prenatal vitamins, functional one-carbon metabolism gene variants, and risk for autism in the CHARGE Study,” which was published online in May 2011 and in print in July in the journal Epidemiology.

The study found that women who reported not taking a daily prenatal vitamin immediately before and during the first month of pregnancy were nearly twice as likely to have a child later diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder as women who did take the supplements. The risk rose to seven times as great when combined with a high-risk genetic make-up.

The study’s lead author is Rebecca J. Schmidt, assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences. The senior author is Irva Hertz-Picciotto, professor and chief of the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health in the Department of Public Health Sciences. Schmidt, Hertz-Picciotto and their colleagues postulate in the study that folic acid, the synthetic form of folate or vitamin B9, and the other B vitamins in prenatal supplements likely protect against deficits in early fetal brain development. Folate is known to be critical to neurodevelopment and earlier studies have found that supplemental folic acid has the potential to prevent up to 70 percent of neural tube defects. The other authors of the study include UC Davis’ Robin Hansen, Linda Schmidt and Daniel Tancredi and UCLA’s Jaana Hartiala and Hooman Allayee.

It is an honor to be recognized for our work by Autism Speaks, an organization well-known for promoting autism research at the cutting edge,” Schmidt said. “We hope this recognition of research investigating maternal nutritional factors as they interact with genetic susceptibility in relation to autism may spur further pursuit of modifiable exposures that can be targeted for prevention of this disorder.”

The third study Autism Speaks acknowledged is research led by Sally Ozonoff, vice chair for research at the UC Davis MIND Institute and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

Ozonoff’s study, “Recurrence risk for autism spectrum disorders: A Baby Siblings Research Consortium study,” was published in the journal Pediatrics in August 2011. The study found that the risk that an infant with an older sibling with autism also will develop the disorder, previously estimated at between 3 and 10 percent, is substantially higher at approximately 19 percent.

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UC Davis study does not find differences in brain size of girls with autism or boys with early onset autism.

David Amaral and Christine Wu Nordahl, UC Davis

In the largest study of brain development in preschoolers with autism to date, a study by UC Davis MIND Institute researchers has found that 3-year-old boys with regressive autism, but not early onset autism, have larger brains than their healthy counterparts.

The study is published online today (Nov. 28) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. It was led by Christine Wu Nordahl, a researcher at the UC Davis MIND Institute and an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and David G. Amaral, Beneto Foundation chair, MIND Institute research director and University of California Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“The finding that boys with regressive autism show a different form of neuropathology than boys with early onset autism is novel,” Nordahl said. “Moreover, when we evaluated girls with autism separately from boys, we found that no girls — regardless of whether they had early onset or regressive autism — had abnormal brain growth.”

Brain enlargement has been observed in previous studies of autism. However, prior to this study, little was known about how many and which children with autism have abnormally large brains.

“This adds to the growing evidence that there are multiple biological subtypes of autism, with different neurobiological underpinnings,” Amaral said.

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder whose symptoms include deficits in language and social interaction and communication. The condition affects 1 in 110 children born today, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is diagnosed more frequently in male children than female children — at a ratio of 4 to 1.

The current study is one of the first published from data collected by the UC Davis MIND Institute Autism Phenome Project (APP). The project’s goal is to recruit and enroll as many very young children as possible in order to collect sufficient biological and behavioral information to characterize different autism subgroups and to explore different neural, immunologic, and genetic signatures of autism.

For the study, the authors enrolled a total of 180 children between age 2 and 4. One hundred and fourteen of the participants had autism spectrum disorder; the remaining participants were 66 age-matched typically developing controls. Of the children with autism, 54 percent were diagnosed with the regressive form and 46 with the non-regressive type.

The researchers collected magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 180 participants at age 3. To evaluate the rate of brain growth prior to age 3, they analyzed head circumference measurements taken from pediatric well-baby visits from birth through 18 months. Roughly half of the children with autism were reported by their parents as having experienced a regression, characterized by the loss of previously acquired language and social skills.

The MRIs were carried out on study participants during natural, nighttime sleep using protocols developed specifically for the Autism Phenome Project by Nordahl.

“Obtaining MRI scans in 3-year-old children without the use of sedation may seem quite challenging. But, by working closely with the parents, we actually were successful more than 85 percent of the time. Patience on the part of everyone and the dedication of the families was critical for our success,” Nordahl said.

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Affected brain area involved in social, communication and cognitive functions.

Eric Courchesne, UC San Diego

A study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, Autism Center of Excellence shows that brain overgrowth in boys with autism involves an abnormal, excess number of neurons in areas of the brain associated with social, communication and cognitive development.

The scientists discovered a 67 percent excess of cortical cells — a type of brain cell made only before birth — in children with autism. The findings suggest that the disorder may arise from prenatal processes gone awry, according to lead researcher Eric Courchesne, Ph.D., professor of neurosciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and director of the Autism Center of Excellence.

Relying on meticulous, direct cell counting, the study — to be published Wednesday (Nov. 9) by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health — confirms a relatively recent theory about possible causes of autism.

Small head circumference at birth, followed by a sudden and excessive increase in head circumference during the first year of life, was first linked to development of autism by Courchesne’s team in 2003, in a paper published in JAMA.

In the new study, Courchesne and colleagues compared postmortem tissue from the prefrontal cortex of seven boys, ages 2 to 16 years, who had autism, to that of six typically developing boys. The prefrontal cortex is part of the brain’s outermost cortical layer, comprising roughly one-third of all cortical gray matter. It is the part of the brain involved in social, language, communication, affective and cognitive functions — functions most disrupted in autism.

“Brain imaging studies of young children with autism have shown overgrowth and dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex as well as other brain regions,” said Courchesne. “But the underlying cause at the level of brain cells has remained a mystery. The best guess was that overgrowth of prefrontal cortex might be due to an abnormal excess of brain cells, but this had never been tested.”

Using an advanced computerized analysis system developed by co-investigator Peter Mouton of the University of South Florida, along with blinded anatomical and cell count measurements, the study found that children with autism had 67 percent more neurons in the prefrontal cortex than control subjects. The brains of the autistic children also weighed more than those of typically developing children of the same age.

“Because new cortical neurons are not generated after birth, the increase in neuron numbers in children with autism points to prenatal processes,” said Courchesne. He went on to explain that proliferation of such neurons is exponential between 10 and 20 weeks gestation and normally results in an overabundance of neurons at this point in fetal development. However, during the third trimester of pregnancy and early life of an infant, about half of those neurons are normally removed in a process called apoptosis (cell death). A failure of that key early developmental process would create a large pathological excess of cortical neurons.

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If you suspect your child is not developing normally, speak to your pediatrician.

Seeing your baby’s first social smile is one of the joys of early parenthood. But what if your baby hasn’t reached that critical developmental milestone by six months? Should you be worried that your child has autism?

A lack of smiling by itself doesn’t mean your child has autism, says Pantea Sharifi-Hannauer, M.D., a pediatric neurologist, Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA, who specializes in autism and epilepsy. But if you notice that your baby also isn’t babbling, cooing, making eye contact or responding to his name by 12 months, you should speak to your pediatrician about getting an evaluation, she says.

“Moms know when there’s something off with their baby,” Dr. Sharifi-Hannauer says. “One thing that studies have shown repeatedly is that primary doctors need to take mothers’ concerns more seriously.”

Autism, also known as Autism Spectrum Disorders or ASD, is not a single disease. Instead, it refers to a group of developmental disabilities that includes a wide range of language deficits as well as emotional and social delays. About 1 in 110 children are diagnosed with ASD every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Boys are four times as likely as girls to have autism. Researchers believe there may be many causes for the disease, including several genetic mutations. “You can have high functioning and low functioning autism. And many of these kids are very smart with really high IQs,” says Sharifi-Hannauer.

Can autism be cured? Autism cannot be cured, but it can be treated — and the earlier the better. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General recommends that anyone with autism or even suspected autism should begin receiving behavioral, speech and occupational therapy as early as possible — typically starting at 18 months. Although the cost of early intervention therapies can be prohibitively expensive, a new California law requires health insurance companies to start providing proven behavioral treatment therapies to people with autism beginning July 2012.

Early intervention

If you suspect your child is not developing normally, speak to your pediatrician about your concerns or schedule an appointment with a pediatric neurologist. “The sooner you start, the better the prognosis,” says Sharifi-Hannauer.

Red flags for autism

• Doesn’t respond to name
• Poor eye contact
• Doesn’t smile
• Doesn’t play with toys
• Doesn’t engage
• Delayed language
• Delayed social skills

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Rats given SSRIs during development exhibit abnormalities and behaviors characteristic of autism spectrum disorder.

Michael Merzenich, UC San Francisco

A study by researchers at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, shows that rats given a popularly prescribed antidepressant during development exhibit brain abnormalities and behaviors characteristic of autism spectrum disorders.

The findings suggest that taking a certain class of antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors — SSRIs — during pregnancy might be one factor contributing to a dramatic rise in these developmental disorders in children.

“We saw behaviors in the treated rats and neurological problems that indicate their brains are not properly conducting and processing information,” said Rick C.S. Lin, Ph.D.,  professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences at UMMC and principal investigator on the study.

“However, based on this study alone it would be premature to conclude that a pregnant mother should stop taking SSRIs. A pregnant mother may do more harm to her baby through untreated depression than by taking prescribed SSRIs. This study is a starting point and a lot more research needs to be done.”

The study appears online today (Oct. 24) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences at www.pnas.org.

The researchers treated more than 200 rats with the SSRI citalopram during key stages of brain development. Rats are born at an earlier developmental stage than humans, equivalent to the end of the sixth month of fetal development in humans.

Most rats received treatment for two weeks, beginning eight days post birth, a neurodevelopment period equivalent to the third trimester and early infancy in humans.

In contrast with control-group rats, the investigators found the treated populations were uninterested in play when young and displayed poor social behaviors as adults. The treated rats also showed abnormal responses to changes in their environment. For example, they froze at the sound of a novel tone and showed little interest in exploring new toys.

“These results demonstrate that rat pups, when exposed perinatally to SSRIs, exhibit behavioral traits often seen in ASD,” said Kimberly Simpson, Ph.D., the paper’s first author and UMMC associate professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences.

Those behaviors occurred more often — and sometimes exclusively — in the treated male rats than in treated females. Similarly, autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is diagnosed more often in males.

Of numerous SSRIs available, the researchers chose citalopram because it is one of the most specific in targeting the serotonin system with little overlap on other neurotransmitters.

Michael Merzenich, Ph.D., UCSF professor of otolaryngology and physiology, analyzed the rats’ primary auditory cortices using electrophysiologic techniques. In the treated, month-old rats Merzenich found functional abnormalities consistent with ASD.

“What we see in this experiment is a strong impact on the auditory cortex. These animals are not maturing in the normal, progressive way, and those differences are substantial,” said Merzenich, a senior author on the paper. “The cortex is sluggish and represents sounds with low accuracy. The listening cortex is delayed in development and is impaired into adulthood.”

Delayed development of the representation of aural speech is a hallmark of ASD in children, Merzenich said. It contributes to these children’s struggles with language and reading.

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UCLA imaging study shows slower growth extends into adolescence.

Researchers at UCLA have found a possible explanation for why autistic children act and think differently than their peers. For the first time, they’ve shown that the connections between brain regions that are important for language and social skills grow much more slowly in boys with autism than in non-autistic children.

Reporting in the current online edition of the journal Human Brain Mapping, senior author Jennifer G. Levitt, a professor of psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA; first author Xua Hua, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher; and colleagues found aberrant growth rates in areas of the brain implicated in the social impairment, communication deficits and repetitive behaviors that characterize autism.

Autism is thought to affect one in 110 children in the U.S., and many experts believe the numbers are growing. Despite its prevalence, little is known about the disorder, and no cure has been discovered.

Normally, as children grow into teenagers, the brain undergoes major changes. This highly dynamic process depends on the creation of new connections, called white matter, and the elimination, or “pruning,” of unused brain cells, called gray matter. As a result, our brains work out the ideal and most efficient ways to understand and respond to the world around us.

Although most children with autism are diagnosed before they are 3 years old, this new study suggests that delays in brain development continue into adolescence.

“Because the brain of a child with autism develops more slowly during this critical period of life, these children may have an especially difficult time struggling to establish personal identity, develop social interactions and refine emotional skills,” Hua said. “This new knowledge may help to explain some of the symptoms of autism and could improve future treatment options.”

The researchers used a type of brain-imaging scan called a T1-weighted MRI, which can map structural changes during brain development. To study how the brains of boys with autism changed over time, they scanned 13 boys diagnosed with autism and a control group of seven non-autistic boys on two separate occasions. The boys ranged in age from 6 to 14 at the time of the first scan; on average, they were scanned again approximately three years later.

By scanning the boys twice, the scientists were able to create a detailed picture of how the brain changes during this critical period of development.

Besides seeing that the white-matter connections between those brain regions that are important for language and social skills were growing much slower in the boys with autism, they found a second anomaly: In two areas of the brain — the putamen, which is involved in learning, and the anterior cingulate, which helps regulate both cognitive and emotional processing — unused cells were not properly pruned away.

“Together, this creates unusual brain circuits, with cells that are overly connected to their close neighbors and under-connected to important cells further away, making it difficult for the brain to process information in a normal way,” Hua said.

“The brain regions where growth rates were found to be the most altered were associated with the problems autistic children most often struggle with — social impairment, communication deficits and repetitive behavior,” she added.

Future studies using alternative neuroscience techniques should attempt to identify the source of this white-matter impairment, the researchers said.

“This study provides a new understanding of how the brains of children with autism are growing and developing in a unique way,” Levitt said. “Brain imaging could be used to determine if treatments are successful at addressing the biological difference. The delayed brain growth in autism may also suggest a different approach for educational intervention in adolescent and adult patients, since we now know their brains are wired differently to perceive information.”

Other authors on the study included Paul M. Thompson, Alex D. Leow, Sarah K. Madsen, Rochelle Caplan, Jeffry R. Alger, Joseph O’Neill, Kishori Joshi, Susan L. Smalley and Arthur W. Toga, all of UCLA. Support was provided by the National Institutes of Health, the National Alliance for Autism Research, the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The authors report no conflict of interest.

The UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, which seeks to improve understanding of the brain in health and disease, is a leader in the development of advanced computational algorithms and scientific approaches for the comprehensive and quantitative mapping of brain structure and function. The laboratory is part of the UCLA Department of Neurology, which encompasses more than a dozen research, clinical and teaching programs. The department ranks first among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding.

Finding may lead to screening test to identify susceptibility to having an autistic child.

Judy Van de Water (right) works with a student researcher

A study by researchers at UC Davis has found that pregnant women with a particular gene variation are more likely to produce autoantibodies to the brains of their developing fetuses and that the children of these mothers are at greater risk of later being diagnosed with autism.

The finding is the first to demonstrate a genetic mechanism at play in the development of the neurodevelopmental disorder among some children — offering the possibility of a genetic test for some women at risk for having a child with autism, said Judy Van de Water, an immunologist and the study’s co-principal investigator.

“Association of a MET genetic variant with autism-associated maternal autoantibodies to fetal brain proteins and cytokine expression,” is published online today in the journal Translational Psychiatry, a Nature publication.

“Our study gives strong support for the idea that, in at least some cases, autism results from maternal immunity gone overboard,” said Van de Water, a professor of internal medicine and a researcher affiliated with the UC Davis MIND Institute. “This is the first time that a genetic factor known to be important in autism and its effects have been demonstrated.”

Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a child’s ability to learn and communicate socially. It affects an estimated 1 in 110 children in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the study, Van de Water and her colleagues examined the action of the MET gene, which has a known association with autism, among 200 mothers of children with autism and 150 mothers of typically developing children enrolled in the Northern California-based Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the Environment (CHARGE) Study.  All of the study participants were between 24 and 60 months of age at the time of study enrollment, lived with one biological parent, and spoke either English or Spanish.

The researchers found that the C-allele of the MET gene is more common in mothers with several immunologic abnormalities that might contribute to the development of autism.  Analysis of the MET C-allele is a method of determining susceptibility for immune dysregulation in the mothers.

One abnormality they attributed to the MET C allele is the presence of antibodies against fetal brain proteins in the blood of the mothers. These brain-attacking antibodies occur in some mothers with an autistic child, but are not found in mothers of typically developing children. It is believed that these antibodies somehow injure the developing brain of the fetus, and in some instances may cause autism.

Researchers do not yet know when or how the antibodies are formed, or precisely what happens to the brain tissue exposed to them, but based on a collaborative paper with Loren Martin at Azuza Pacific University, they appear to have pathologic significance, or a functional effect on brain development, changing the way the brain develops. Van de Water and her group are still working on the precise effect of these maternal antibodies on the developing brain.

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Researchers recruiting families for study that will assess how autistic children adapt to early school years.

Jan Blacher, UC Riverside

A University of California, Riverside, education professor has started recruiting children for a first-of-its-kind study that will assess how children with autism adapt to the early school years and identify predictors that will lead to a successful transition.

The research, made possible by a nearly $1.2 million grant, is led by Jan Balcher, a professor and founding director of the SEARCH (Support, Education, Advocacy, Resources, Community, Hope) family autism research center at UC Riverside. It focuses on the essential ingredients of a successful transition from intensive early intervention, which most children with autism receive when they are first diagnosed, to the public school system.

“Typically, it has not been smooth sailing when parents transition their child from intensive home therapy to kindergarten, where services may be less intense or less personalized,” Blacher said. “It’s really frustrating watching this happen, and often it leads to friction on the part of parents and schools. We need data to drive the daily decisions about what constitutes a good transition — what works, and what doesn’t.”

This research aims to change that.

Past research on typically developing children, not those with autism spectrum disorders, has demonstrated that the quality of children’s relationships with their teachers is related to subsequent academic and social adjustment.

The quality of student-teacher relationships may be particularly important for children with autism spectrum disorders because they often lack the social skills and have behavioral challenges that make it difficult to build positive relationships with teachers that may help protect them against later school adjustment problems.

Blacher, along with Abbey Eisenhower, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and co-principal investigator on the project called “Smooth Sailing,” received the three-year grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.

Blacher and Eisenhower, along with their graduate students and staff, are both recruiting 90 children, ages 4 to 7 who have been diagnosed with autism or autism spectrum disorder, to take part in the study.

In Riverside, after being screened for eligibility, parents and children will be invited to visit campus three times over 18 months.

During each visit, children will be assessed on their academic skills, with a focus on language and literacy. Parents will also be interviewed to assess perceived school factors, such as quality learning opportunities and child engagement. In addition, parents and teachers will complete questionnaires to measure factors such as the child’s social skills and behavior, the parent’s involvement in school, and the student-teacher relationship.

In return, parents and children will receive $150, an assessment summary after the first visit this fall, a parent-child DVD after the second visit in the spring and a developmental summary at the third visit during the following school year.

For more information, call SEARCH at (951) 827-3849.

UC Irvine’s licensing officers help campus researchers protect their inventions.

Alvin Viray, UC Irvine

They call it “the baby monitor,” but it’s nothing like the ones sold at Babies “R” Us that alert parents when junior’s crying in his crib.

Developed by UC Irvine pediatrics professor Dr. Dan Cooper, the sophisticated wireless device can detect subtle movements in infants that signal increased risk of cerebral palsy, autism and other neurological disorders. It’s outfitted with a sensor created by Pai Chou, UCI associate professor of electrical engineering & computer science, and it has a special application to warn of sudden infant death syndrome.

The baby monitor and sensor are just two of many important inventions conceived at UCI. The campus holds 316 active U.S. patents and 360 foreign ones for ideas and products that do everything from quieting jet noise (Dimitri Papamoschou’s Mach Wave Elimination) to restoring hearing (Fan-Gang Zeng’s cochlear implants).

And, no matter which lab or department they originate from, all fall under the careful eye of UCI’s Office of Technology Alliances. The OTA handles the patenting and licensing of the campus’s intellectual property. It helps UCI employees – primarily faculty and graduate students – protect and market their ideas.

“We’re the liaison between the lab bench and the marketplace,” says Doug Crawford, senior licensing officer for UCI. “We also create alliances with companies in the private sector so that campus research has the greatest positive impact.”

The OTA’s seven officers meet frequently with investigators to learn about their latest projects. “It’s fun to see all this great new stuff,” Crawford says, “and how excited the researchers are about what they’ve invented and what their creations can do for people.”

He recently began working on a patent for a wastewater treatment devised by Betty H. Olson, civil & environmental engineering professor. “It’s not the most glamorous invention – it’s a kit for sewage,” Crawford says. “It detects bacteria that bloom in the water early, before it grows out of control and becomes a lot more expensive to treat. Her technology saves both energy and water.”

Dr. J. Stuart Nelson developed UCI’s No. 1 revenue-producing invention, the Dynamic Cooling Device, which boasts more than $40 million in royalties. The attachment allows medical lasers to penetrate deep into the skin without burning, substantially reducing pain.

“It’s great,” Crawford says. “They did a test spot on my hand with the cooling device. Then they used the laser without it, and – ow! – that hurt.” Nelson created the product for treating birthmarks and port-wine stains. Now it’s standard in all kinds of laser procedures, such as tattoo removal and wrinkle reduction.

Other leading inventors at UCI include Hans Keirstead, who holds worldwide patents for his work with stem cells and the regeneration of damaged spinal cords; Frank LaFerla, director of UCI’s Institute for Memory Impairments & Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND), who has pioneered therapies for cognitive disorders; and Jean-Claude Falmagne, professor emeritus of cognitive sciences and creator of a software program called ALEKS (Assessment & Learning in Knowledge Spaces), which helps children develop learning skills.

While benefiting people by advancing health care, technology and other fields, inventions also benefit the University of California by generating revenue for further research and education.

Intellectual assets belong to UC. Patent income is divided three ways, with UC receiving 50 percent, the inventor pocketing 35 percent, and 15 percent going to the academic department where the idea originated.

All UCI employees must file a record of invention disclosing their creation to the OTA. In 2010-11, the campus had 180 new ROIs. “We review them for patentability and commercial viability,” Crawford says.

Each licensing officer has a different specialty – such as medical devices, microbiology or engineering – to facilitate the complex patent application process. Some have degrees in law or business. “We’re in each other’s offices on a regular basis,” Crawford notes.

His background is in plasma physics. An inventor himself, he holds patents for electrodeless lighting – an alternative to fluorescent bulbs – which he came up with as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Once OTA enters into negotiations with a company for licensing an invention, the office must tread carefully:

“We don’t want them sitting on it to protect their own [possibly competing] product,” Crawford says. “We make sure they intend to get our invention out to the broadest market.”

In addition, the office assists faculty in launching startup companies to manufacture an invention, as with the HIPerWall.

The OTA continues to manage and protect UCI patents until they expire 20 years from the date of filing – and sometimes beyond if an idea is still commercially viable.

“We’re here from cradle to grave,” Crawford says.

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UCSF event held in honor of the late Charles Epstein, a pioneer in the study and treatment of Down syndrome.

(From left) Neil Risch, Ophir Klein, Francis Collins and Lauren Weiss

Personalized medicine and new gene discoveries in human disease were a focus of a daylong symposium hosted by the UCSF Institute for Human Genetics on the Mission Bay campus on Oct. 3.

The now-annual symposium was convened to honor the late Charles J. Epstein, M.D., a pioneer in the study and treatment of Down syndrome and other genetic diseases. Epstein’s advocacy led to the establishment of medical genetics as a field of specialized medicine. He died in February as a result of pancreatic cancer.

Epstein trained many leading geneticists, including several of the symposium speakers. Other speakers, such as Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), were long-time friends and associates.

Collins, this year’s Charles J. and Lois B. Epstein Visiting Professor, gave a talk titled “Achieving Charlie’s Vision: The Science is Finally Catching Up with the Clinic.” Collins, who headed the Human Genome Project from 1993 to 2008, said that Epstein in his Down syndrome research pioneered the discovery of genetic and biochemical abnormalities that cause disease symptoms four decades ago, “when there were very few genes mapped to any chromosome.”

“Over the course of 40 years he brought together the clinical aspects of genetics and the research aspects in a way that has profoundly changed our understanding for all time and brought us into an era when clinical genetics, I think, has a remarkable future,” Collins said.

Through the Human Genome Project, researchers completely spelled out the DNA sequence of an entire human genome for the first time. That milestone, achieved in 2003, required more than a decade and nearly $3 billion.

With ever-improving technology and analytic tools, the cost of reading out an individual’s genome has continued to plummet while sequencing has sped up enormously. Today, Collins said, “We are on a trajectory toward the $1,000 genome.”  In the not-so-distant future the cost of obtaining an entire read-out of an individual’s DNA for use in personalizing medical care might no longer be prohibitively expensive.

Within a year the NIH will make available for research purposes a database containing all the protein-encoding genes for 75,000 individuals, including complete genomic DNA sequences for many of them, Collins said. Making this data available to researchers should greatly aid efforts to identify genetic causes of disease.

Collins described newer NIH grant competitions that put young scientists, including geneticists, on the fast track so that they can quickly begin directing more creative research in their own laboratories. Two symposium speakers, Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, and Lauren Weiss, PhD, are each recipients of one of these grants, called the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

Klein discussed his research on stem cells in teeth and the intestinal tract. His work is leading to basic discoveries about how stem cell populations guide the fate of cells and tissues during development. Weiss described populations studies aimed at identifying genetic mutations that may be responsible for many cases of autism.

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Grants include funding to fight childhood malnutrition and obesity, study links between Alzheimer’s and vascular disease.

Harris Lewin, UC Davis

The University of California, Davis, received more than $684 million in research funds in the fiscal year that ended June 30, compared with more than $678 million in the previous year. While federal research dollars fell slightly as “stimulus” funds tapered off, awards from nongovernmental organizations quadrupled, and state research funding grew by half.

“The increase in overall funding for research at UC Davis is an impressive statement about the quality of our faculty and the relevance of their research programs,” said Harris Lewin, vice chancellor for research at UC Davis.

“While the campus faces the reality of generally declining levels of federal and state funding for research, we are continually aligning our programs to be among the most competitive in the country. We are making investments now that we expect to propel us into the top 10 universities nationally for extramural research, and will streamline our processes to ensure rapid transfer of UC Davis technology, which will improve the lives of people everywhere,” Lewin said.

In the past decade, UC Davis research funding has more than doubled, from $298 million in 2000-01 to today’s $684.3 million. Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi has set a goal of raising that figure by a third, to $1 billion.

An enhanced research enterprise is a key goal of Katehi’s 2020 Initiative, which will increase undergraduate enrollment by 5,000 students by 2020 and support 300 new tenure-track faculty. It is expected that these new professors will enhance academic and research opportunities for UC Davis students, and bring with them research grants and programs that will address in innovative ways the world’s most critical issues in food, water, health, society, energy and the environment.

Examples of grants awarded to UC Davis faculty in the past year include:

• $40 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to lead two national research projects, one focused on improving wheat varieties as a way to ensure an adequate global food supply and one on forest tree genetics as a way to sustain the environment.
• $20 million from the National Institutes of Health for five additional years of funding for the UC Davis Health System’s Clinical and Translational Science Center, which focuses on fast-tracking research findings from the laboratory to the bedside to advance human health.
• $4.8 million from the USDA to fight childhood malnutrition and obesity in California’s Central Valley.
• $3 million from the National Science Foundation to help K-12 teachers increase student success in math.
• $2.7 million from the National Institutes of Health to study links between Alzheimer’s and vascular disease.
• $1.5 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support four research initiatives in the humanities.
• $1.5 million from the National Science Foundation for work on new types of solar cells, research that can help address global warming while reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
• $770,000 from Autism Speaks, a nonprofit organization, for research on gastrointestinal problems in autism.

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