Exploring Heterogeneity to Advance Precision Health in Autism - Evdokia Anagnostou, Synchrony 2023

While significant progress has been made in recent years in our understanding of the underlying biology of autism, providing hypotheses for interventions to address the core symptom, clinical trials of these interventions have so far failed to show significant benefits. However, while no positive benefit has been found in the overall intent-to-treat groups, in many of these studies there appeared to be a subset of participants for whom the intervention had significant, sometimes life-changing effects.

Those findings firmly point to etiological and/or pathophysiological heterogeneity of autism. They also highlight the urgent need to identify individuals who are likely to respond to any particular treatment and to design later phase treatment trials around those individuals.

Evdokia Anagnostou, PhD is a Child Neurologist, Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto and Assistant Director at Holland Bloorview’s Research Institute. She holds Canada’s Research Chair in translational therapeutics in ASD and the Dr. Stuart D. Sims Chair in Autism at Holland Bloorview.

She is also a Co-Director of the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Network (POND) - network of a team of clinicians, scientists, engineers and other stakeholders from the public and private sector located across Ontario.

Dr. Anagnostou has dedicated her career to challenging the field of neurodevelopmental disorders to rethink #diagnostic categories and focus on underlying biology rather than labels.

In her talk Dr. Anagnostou outlines their most recent findings and the ongoing efforts to enable precision diagnostic and health interventions in autism and related disorders.


🎥 This talk was part of Synchrony 2023 Online Symposium - 'From Bench to Biopharma', organised by the The BRAIN Foundation

🎥 Synchrony 2023 playlist:    • Synchrony Symposium 2023  

Synchrony https://brainfoundation.org/synchrony... is the first and only international symposium on translational research in #autism, that brings together academia, #biotech, #pharmaceuticalcompanies and venture partners from around the world with the mission to improve health and quality of life of people with #autismspectrumdisorder.


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The BRAIN Foundation https://brainfoundation.org/ is a 501c(3) non-profit. The founders of BRAIN envision a world where every child and adult on the autism spectrum is healthy, participates fully in education and employment, and has a better quality of life. It aims to catalyze research that results in evidence-based interventions for the disabilities associated with autism, and also results in better medical standard of care. To accomplish this, it funds impactful research through #philanthropy and our network of partners in the venture, corporate, and grassroots community.