UCLA awarded $7.5 million grant to support international autism clinical trials network
Connecting Research, Community, and Technology to Accelerate Therapies
Aligning Research to Impact Autism (ARIA) is an initiative to accelerate scientific discovery and create more therapeutic opportunities for people with profound autism and people on the spectrum who seek additional support to improve daily life.
Driving impact by:
Generating knowledge. Accelerating therapies.
ARIA will complement existing research, support new initiatives, and harness promising science to enable the development of tailored supports that address quality-of-life priorities in areas such as communication, mood, and safety.
Learn more about our approachBetter understanding co-occurring conditions.
Autism is complex and often co-occurs with epilepsy, mood, attentional conditions, and other symptoms such as sleeping and eating difficulties. For many autistic people and their families, addressing these co-occurring conditions is a priority. People with profound autism often cut across diagnostic boundaries, sitting at the intersection of autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions.
Learn more about our approachFostering connections and networks.
Building a dedicated clinical trials research infrastructure that brings together researchers and clinicians across diagnostic boundaries to accelerate the development, testing, and scaling of the most promising therapies.
Learn more about our approachIdentifying new opportunities.
We are at an inflection point with many technologies. We can leverage recent advances in biochemistry, bioinformatics, computational modeling, and neuromodulation, and rigorously test promising approaches before moving them into the clinical trials research pipeline.
Learn more about our approachExplore our Research Roadmap
Working with science and technology experts, opinion leaders, patient advocates, and other stakeholders, we developed four interconnected elements that comprise the ARIA ecosystem.
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Research Hubs
Learn moreWe support research hubs with the shared goal of creating a coordinated, collaborative environment that drives innovation and advances scientific discovery.
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Community Collaborators
Learn moreWe integrate the voices of patients, family members, and community advocates throughout the research process. This ensures lived experiences of autistic individuals and their families meaningfully guide our work.
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Open Science Infrastructure
Learn moreWe are accelerating autism research through open science practices that maximize the accessibility, impact, and reusability of our work. To support this, we have launched ARIA’s Open Science Policy.
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Centralized Services
Learn moreWe collaborate with a variety of organizations to ensure consistency, scalability, and data interoperability across ARIA projects.
Our Research Hubs
Genetic Medicines
We are working to develop genetic medicine therapeutics for specific genetic causes of autism by exploring versatile treatment approaches.
View the Approach
Protein-Protein Interactions
We are mapping complex molecular interactions to build a pipeline that turns discoveries about new proteins into therapies.
Discover the Research
Human Developmental Neurobiology
We are mapping the cellular and molecular architecture of human brain development to uncover biological mechanisms common to neurodevelopmental conditions.
See the Science
Neurosensing and Neuromodulation
We are exploring the intersection of brain activity and clinical symptom presentation by developing advanced tools for monitoring and modulating neural circuits.
Explore the Projects
Functional Communication
We are assessing key communication challenges in profound autism to develop new measures and interventions that might support communication for individuals who are minimally verbal or non-verbal.
View the Goals
IMPACT Network
The IMPACT Network is a collaborative international network designed to accelerate clinical trial readiness and implementation for autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions.
Explore the Network
