New Insight Into How Autism Might Develop in Human Brain

In a study published in Stem Cell Reports, a McGill University team of scientists led by Dr. Carl Ernst, researcher at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre, revealed a molecular mechanism that may play a role in the development of autism.

By taking skin cells from patients and reprogramming those cells to become brain cells through genetic engineering, Dr. Ernst, graduate student Scott Bell, and Edward A. Fon and Thomas M. Durcan, colleagues at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, tracked how a brain cell with the patient’s own mutation develops improperly.