AGRE
AGRE reaches 100 publication milestone and receives
$8.4 million NIMH grant for continuation and expansion of autism multiplex collection
researchers all over the globe. As of December 2007, this open-access, collaborative resource contained information on over 1600 families with autism, making it the largest privately maintained autism repository in the world.
As parents know, the research process can be frustratingly slow. AGRE significantly speeds up the process by providing researchers with the necessary materials and information to test a diversity of hypotheses without having to recruit families or collect their own data. Furthermore, having such a large database of sample data provides researchers with more meaningful insight into the disorder. The impact has been enormous. This summer AGRE reached a publication milestone, when the 100th paper citing use of the resource was released. As recognition of this remarkable contribution and the pivotal role of AGRE in advancing autism research, in September 2007 the National Institute of Mental Health awarded an $8.4 million grant to the University of Southern California that will provide funding to support AGRE with the next five years of data collection.
The AGRE program provides families with a means to get involved and positively contribute to autism research. A better understanding of autism will require different scientific approaches and even greater numbers of families. This year scientists studying other complex disorders such as diabetes and heart disease found that sample sizes on the order of tens of thousands of affected individuals were required before common disease genes could be detected. Continued expansion of AGRE and other collections like it will be necessary to reach these goals as fast as possible.
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