Jason Stein, PhD (Associate Professor, Genetics and Neuroscience Center) has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from Ramona Optics for his project titled “A parallelized imaging platform for accurate and efficient long-term assessment of organoid growth”.
Based on earlier studies from his group that showed that cortical surface area hyper-expansion from 6 to 12 months of age precedes brain volume overgrowth from 12-24 months and predicts autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis at 24 months of age11,12, this study proposes to identify mechanisms leading to this brain overgrowth by utilizing iPSC-derived brain organoids from a well-powered and deeply phenotyped cohort with multiple control groups, the Infant Brain Imaging Study.