Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Mechanisms and Therapeutics

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including autism, intellectual disability, and epilepsy, arise from disruptions during brain development and pose major challenges to public health. Although advances in genetics have identified hundreds of causal genetic risk factors, identifying convergent mechanisms underlying their pathobiology remains a challenge, which hinders the development of personalized therapies. This meeting addresses the critical gap between emerging insights into causal factors, neurodevelopment, and therapeutic innovation by uniting experts across basic and translational neuroscience. This conference will foster new collaborations between investigators in genetics, functional genomics, developmental neurobiology, and industry. Specific aims include showcasing breakthroughs in single-cell genomics, genome perturbation technologies, gene-environment interactions, and novel therapeutic strategies such as gene replacement therapies and ASOs. Unlike existing meetings that focus separately on neurodevelopment, stem cell models, or therapeutic pipelines, this conference uniquely fuses mechanistic understanding of genetic and environmental causes with translational application. This meeting will be held jointly with Neural Plasticity and Recovery after Traumatic CNS Injury & Stroke.

Topics: Neurobiology, Neuroscience, Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Gene Therapy, Translational Research, Functional Genomics, Genetics, Genome Editing, Neurogenomics