Biomarkers start telling us a story: Autism pathophysiology revisited

The speaker:

Antonio Persico, MD, studied Psychiatry at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Rome, Italy) in 1990 and worked as Visiting Foreign Fellow at the Natl. Inst. on Drug Abuse (Baltimore, MD) between 1991 and 1994, with a focus on the genetics of drug addiction. Starting in 1995, at University “Campus Bio-Medico” (Rome, Italy), Dr. Persico began exploring the role of serotonin in neurodevelopment and the genetics of autism. Since then, autism and neurodevelopmental disorders have been his primary focus. In 2010, he started the clinical Unit of Child & Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at UCBM, then becoming in 2015 Full Professor of Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry at the University of Messina (Italy). Here he directed the Interdepartmental Program “Autism 0-90” at the “G. Martino” University Hospital. Dr. Persico’s overarching target is to “link clinical phenomena to their genetic, epigenetic and neurobiological underpinnings in neurodevelopmental disorders.” His specific research interests are thus primarily translational: clustering autistic patients in biologically meaningful ways, identifying biomarkers for early diagnosis and to predict response/non-response to specific forms of therapies, developing novel evidence-based pharmacological, behavioral and occupational interventions. Dr. Persico’s goal is to “improve as much as possible the long-term trajectory and the quality of life of autistic individuals and their families at all ages.” Currently, Dr. Persico is at Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia.