Autistic Mice Act a Lot Like Human Patients: Geneticists Develop Promising Mouse Model for Testing New Autism Therapies

Autistic mice?


Autistic Mice Act a Lot Like Human Patients: Geneticists Develop Promising Mouse Model for Testing New Autism Therapies 


UCLA scientists have created a mouse model for autism that opens a window into the biological mechanisms that underlie the disease and offers a promising way to test new treatment approaches.

Published in the Sept. 30 edition ofCell, the research found that autistic mice display remarkably similar symptoms and behavior as children and adults on the autism spectrum. The animals also responded well to an FDA-approved drug prescribed to autism patients to treat repetitive behaviors often associated with the disease.

"Though many genes have been linked to autism, it remains unclear what goes awry to increase a person's susceptibility to the disorder," explained Dr. Daniel Geschwind, who holds the Gordon and Virginia MacDonald Distinguished Chair in Human Genetics and is a professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the Center for Autism Research and Treatment at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA. "We developed a mouse model to observe how a gene variant commonly linked to human autism reveals itself in mice."

Read more: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110929122749