Autism is a spectrum of developmental disabilities impacting social skills, language processing, cognition and other functions. The UofL tool has been shown to be 98.5% accurate in diagnosing kids as young as two, which could give doctors more time to intervene with potentially life-changing therapy. Their results were published in the journal .

“Therapy could be the difference between an individual needing full-time care and being independent, holding a job and living a fulfilled life,” said Ayman El-Baz, a co-inventor and professor and chair in the . He developed the technology with Gregory Barnes and Manuel Casanova of the UofL .

shows therapy can have the most impact if done in early childhood, when the brain is more elastic. However, currently, and even fewer are diagnosed by age eight. The problem, the researchers say, is one of supply and demand — there are too many patients and too few specialists to conduct the interviews and examinations needed for diagnosis.

“As a result, there’s an urgent need for a new, objective technology that can help us diagnose kids early,” said Barnes, a professor of neurology and executive director of the . “We think our tool can help fill that need, while providing more objectivity over the current interview method.”

With the UofL technology, AI can make the initial diagnosis, which researchers think could reduce specialist workload by as much as 30%. The specialist would meet later with the patient to confirm the diagnosis and talk about next steps.

The UofL technology works by using AI to analyze magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for differences and abnormal connections that may indicate autism. Tested against scans of 226 children between the ages of 24 and 48 months, the technology was able to identify the 120-some children with autism with near perfect accuracy.

By looking at the physical structures of the brain rather than using interviews, researchers believe they can make diagnoses more objective and target the specific parts of the brain that may benefit most from therapy.

“The idea is that by drawing from both medicine and engineering, we can come up with a better solution that improves lives,” said Mohamed Khudri, a undergraduate student and author on the paper.

The diagnostic technology and intellectual property received support through . That includes the office’s suite of innovation programs, aimed at developing research-backed inventions for market, including the prestigious national Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program through the National Science Foundation. UofL is one of only a handful of universities nationwide to have each of these programs — and it’s the only one to have them all.

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The PD Buddy Program, now in its third year, is a collaboration between the UofL School of Medicine, UofL Physicians – Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, UofL College of ����ֱ�� and Human Development and the Parkinson’s Support Center of Kentuckiana.

The program matches first-year medical students with patients affected by Parkinson’s disease. The “buddy” pairs meet monthly to share challenges and accomplishments of living with the disease.

The program offers students an opportunity to learn about PD outside a classroom setting, and patients can share their stories and benefit from social interactions. Students also receive education about PD and several group activities, such as a holiday party or a bowling afternoon, are scheduled throughout the year.
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The program runs from September 2017 through April 2018 and the average time commitment is 3 to 4 hours per month. For more information about the PD Buddy Program, .

To sign up, contact the UofL Physicians clinic at 502-582-7654. The deadline for registration is Aug. 31.

The number of individuals with AD and related disorders in the region is rising due to the rapidly aging population and public health systems have not kept pace with recent developments in treatment.

“There is little awareness of dementia in the region because of prevailing biases about the loss of function in healthy aging,” Friedland said. “People in the Middle East need to know that it is never normal for a person at any age to be demented.”

Friedland, the Mason and Mary Rudd Endowed Chair in Neurology at UofL and an organizer for the previous six ICAD-ME meetings, will discuss his research into the relationship between gut microbiota and neurodegeneration, and provide information on potential preventative measures to delay the onset of AD. In addition, he hopes to learn about special features and needs of the region’s population.

The conference will cover topics including the history of Alzheimer’s disease and its basic pathophysiology, pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies, ethical and legal issues, and aging as it is addressed in the Koran and the Bible.

The event, sponsored by the United States National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging and Biogen, is Feb. 23-25, 2017 in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Additional organizers are Changiz Geula, PhD, professor at Northwestern University, Marwan Sabbagh, MD, professor at Barrow Neurological Institute of Phoenix, and Abdu Adem, PhD, professor at United Arab Emirates University.

“It turns out the spinal cord is really really smart. And it��may be as smart as the brain,” Behrman said. “The brain gets information, listens to it, reads it, responds, integrates it and generates an outcome. When (the researchers) found that out, they said ‘I wonder if anybody can use this information in rehabilitating people with spinal cord injuries?’ And the answer is yes.”��

Watch more about UofL’s locomotor training, and Emmalie’s story:��

“Management of Primary Glioma in Adults,” co-hosted by the UofL Department of Neurology and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, a part of KentuckyOne Health, will be Friday, July 8 from 7:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Kosair Charities Clinical and Translational Research Building, 505 S. Hancock St. on the University of Louisville Health Sciences Campus. The event is open to patients and their families, as well as physicians and health care professionals.

Conference director Eric Burton, MD, assistant professor in the UofL Department of Neurology and director of neuro-oncology at JGBCC, will provide an overview of adult glioma, a tumor that develops in the supportive tissue of the brain. Presenters from MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of California, San Francisco, Toronto General Hospital and the University of Louisville will then address best current practices and future treatment directions for patients with primary gliomas using surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, as well as a discussion of molecular markers in adult glioma.

“These are some of the most influential and highly respected physician researchers in neuro-oncology and neuropathology,” Burton said. “This is an excellent opportunity for physicians across the region, as well as patients and their families, to learn about the latest developments in the pathology and treatment of brain tumors.”

In addition to Burton, presenters include:

senior scientist and director of MacFeeters-Hamilton Brain Tumor Centre at Toronto General Hospital and professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. Aldape is a neuropathologist with a research interest in primary brain tumors. His work includes the identification of biomarkers in gliomas, characterizing glioma subtypes and identifying clinically relevant molecular alterations in these tumors. In 2014, Aldape received the Guha Award for Excellence in Neuro-Oncology Research from the Society for Neuro-Oncology.

Charles B Wilson Chair in Neurosurgery and professor emeritus at the University of California San Francisco. Prados led the North America Brain Tumor Consortium for 15 years and was co-project leader of the Adult Brain Tumor Consortium until 2014.��He formed and is co-project leader of the Pacific Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium, a consortium of 15 major academic centers across the U.S., and is co-project leader of a pediatric brain tumor SPORE project at UCSF. Prados has been NIH/NCI funded continuously since 1994 and is a member of the NCI/CTEP Brain Malignancies Steering Committee.��In 2014, he was awarded the Victor Levin Award for lifetime clinical research excellence from the Society of Neuro-Oncology.

chair and professor of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.��He is director of the Brain Tumor Center at MD Anderson and��served as professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine from��2005-2014. His awards include the Joseph P. Evans Award in Neurosurgery at the University of Cincinnati and the Charles Wilson Award from the National Brain Tumor Society. He is past chairman of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Section on Tumors. Sawaya has particular expertise in primary and metastatic brain tumors and is renowned for his strides in enhancing the accessibility and safety of brain tumor surgery.

chair and professor in the UofL Department of Radiation Oncology, professor in the UofL Department of Pediatrics and the Kosair Children’s Hospital/Norton Healthcare Chair in Pediatric Oncology. His clinical focus and research is on brain and spine tumors, pediatric cancer and lung cancer. Woo has received Clinical Fellowship Awards from the American Cancer Society, Teacher of the Year Award from the Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology and the Patient Golden��Apple Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center. He also served as president of the MD Anderson Radiation Oncology Gilbert H. Fletcher Society.

Continuing education credit is available for health care providers. The event is free for UofL-affiliated providers, $15 for nurses and $20 for all others. For additional information, visit the or contact Emily Rollins at emily.rollins@louisvilleneuroscience.com.

In the first research to be published on this protein’s role in the nervous system, Benjamin Harrison, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology and lead author of the article, and his colleagues show that CD2AP, an adaptor protein, orchestrates a complex arrangement of other proteins that controls the branching of nerve axons, the tendrils reaching out from the nerve cell to connect to other nerve cells, skin and organs. This nerve growth occurs in uninjured nerve cells as they extend their reach and create new connections.

“CD2AP brings in all the correct players, forms a multi-protein complex and coordinates that multi-protein complex to achieve growth of the neurons,” Harrison said. “There are a whole bunch of proteins that it could bring together, but it only brings together the correct proteins to create the correct response. In this case, it changes the structure of the axons through sprouting and elongation.”

This axon sprouting may be helpful, but too much of it can be harmful. In normal adult cells, this growth creates new connections and can lead to improved functionality after an injury or stroke. However, if the axons sprout uncontrollably, the result can be exacerbated epilepsy, blood pressure spikes or neuropathic pain. The researchers hope this new understanding of the nerve growth process will lead to therapies that can improve healing and recovery of function following nerve damage while minimizing excessive growth.

“Through targeting this molecule, we could help the body’s natural healing process to coordinate the appropriate growth,” Harrison said.

The research team, based in the lab of Jeffrey Petruska, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Anatomical Sciences and Neurobiology and the Department of Neurological Surgery and the article’s corresponding author, identified CD2AP as a player in the neurological system via a to detect genes associated with neuron growth. Their research examined how CD2AP interacts with various molecules in controlling the neural sprouting process, particularly its relationship with nerve growth factor (NGF).

“People have been studying nerve growth factor and the responses it induces for a while, but this protein (CD2AP) forms a nice link between NGF and the response in the cell,” Harrison said.

Previous research also has associated CD2AP with genetic changes among individuals with Alzheimer’s disease and it may be helpful in understanding the mechanisms involved in Parkinson’s Disease, Huntington’s Disease and spinal cord injuries.

Petruska says this work relates closely to other research being conducted at UofL’s (KSCIRC). He says that understanding these molecular processes could one day be used to amplify the activity-based therapies such as locomotor training now being done with spinal cord injury patients by UofL faculty at Frazier Rehab Center, a part of KentuckyOne Health. Locomotor training helps spinal cord injury patients achieve functional recovery through standing and stepping activity.

“We are starting to discover that there are different modes of nerve growth and different sets of genes that control different kinds of growth,” Petruska said. “This is particularly important as it relates to locomotor training. When you train, you enhance the growth factor environment of the injured spinal cord, and those growth factors are involved in the axon plasticity. This mode that we study is dependent on the growth factors.”

Harrison, who also is part of the (KBRIN), plans to pursue research aimed at developing a drug to provide appropriate nerve growth for spinal cord injury patients.

“My dream,” Harrison said, “is to one day do a clinical trial with a drug that targets this protein and can enhance the ability of the patients to respond to the activity-based rehabilitation (locomotor training) that they are doing at Frazier Rehab Center.”

High school student Cassa Drury earned co-authorship on publication of original research

One member of the research team and a co-author on the publication that first described in the nervous system is Cassa Drury, a junior at Louisville’s duPont Manual High School. Drury has worked in the lab of Petruska, since he mentored her during middle school science fair competitions. As a middle schooler, Drury competed in science fairs at the national and international level with her research on the neurological systems of planaria worms under Petruska’s guidance.

In the team’s research into CD2AP, Drury recorded and analyzed changes in the nerve cells for the publication’s primary author, Harrison. Drury, a high school sophomore at the time, was working in the lab as part of a self-directed learning program offered by her high school.

Drury recorded the length and number of branches in images of neural cells that had been treated with different amounts of CD2AP and those that were not treated to determine the protein’s effect on nerve growth.

“Cassie was the one who did measurements in the cultured neurons to determine that the protein was a positive regulator of growth,” Harrison said.

That work earned Drury a listing as fifth author on the publication, released in the April 13 edition of . A total of 14 authors are credited on the article.

Drury is eager to follow the research to which she has contributed.

“I am really interested to see where this research goes,” Drury said. “This connection is a really strong one and I am excited to see what comes out of it and what Ben ends up doing. I hope he can hand them a drug. That would be wonderful.”