Event

The Department of Preclinical Sciences cordially invites you to a seminar entitled “Rare Genetic Causes for Common Neuropsychiatric Diseases: Novel Opportunities for Personalizing Treatment” presented by visiting lecturer Dr. Dexter Hadley of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Stanford University School of Medicine. The lecture begins at 12:00 noon with light refreshments being served at 11:45 am.

Abstract: The Center for Applied Genomics (CAG) at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is developing a personalized drug discovery pipeline that is fueled by CAG's vast pediatric biorepository. With this pipeline, we have identified drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) through the discovery of a defective network of metabotropic gluatamate receptors (mGluR). When we applied the drug discovery pipeline to the autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), we recently found that defective glutamate receptor pathways also underlie their etiology. Our findings in addition to independent evidence suggest that mGluR defects underlie ADHD, the ASDs, and likely other psychiatric diseases. Therefore, our drug may be applicable as a personalized therapeutic to rescue mGluR genetic defects across the full neuropsychiatric disorder spectrum.