MSU receives $2.1m grant to research Autism causes

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A $2.1 million grant will allow MSU to participate in the largest study in history to examine the risk factors of autism.

MSU Biomedical Research Informatics Core, part of the university’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute, will use funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to continue work for the CDC’s Study to Explore Early Development during the next three years.

The core will serve as a data coordinating center to identify causes of autism, said Philip Reed, director of the Biomedical Research Informatics Core and researcher on the study.

“In order to either prevent or cure the disease, it is necessary for us to understand the causes,” he said. “It isn’t understood what the risk factors are, and this is a large epidemiological study to answer those questions.”

The study is being coordinated at six additional research sites across the country.

“What we have done is built an informatics system that allows the management of the study at all these different sites (and) allows the data to go into that system,” he said.

At the other sites, the 10-year study will identify what puts children at risk for autism and developmental disabilities, and the MSU site will coordinate the data.

Because of the study’s range, the data system will handle approximately 100 million data elements, including
both genetic and environmental causes of autism, Reed said.

In a collaborative study, a data center such as the Biomedical Research Informatics Core is necessary to organize data consistently and maintain accuracy, said Nigel Paneth, an MSU epidemiologist and researcher on the study.

“You need big studies to make a case, and as soon as you have a big study, you need people to manage data,” Paneth said.

MSU’s role in the study as a data center will present the university as a site where large amounts of data can be analyzed successfully and consistently, Paneth said.

“What I see (the core) evolving toward is a data center that can help many more investigations around the country,” he said.

Along with the growth of the data center, he said the center is developing a niche researching developmental disabilities in infants and small children.

Penny Bearden, vice president of the Autism Society of Michigan, said that as of March 2009, there were 13,839 autistically impaired individuals in Michigan schools.

“The numbers are on the rise, and the needs are there so anything we can do to support people in this state is definitely good,” she said.

Both local and national research is important in helping people affected by autism, Bearden said.

“Anything we can do to make life better for our families and the individuals on the spectrum is a good thing,” she said.

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