Autism clues: Brain scans have offered insights Credit: istockphoto

After a year of gathering input from top scientists and vocal public advocates, a US federal government advisory panel has released a blueprint of priorities for autism research.

The 'strategic plan', mandated by the Combating Autism Act in December 2006 and completed on 26 January of this year, recommends 40 specific projects to study the diagnosis, cause and lifelong care of the developmental disorder, which,by some estimates, affects one in 150 people.

The plan, made public on 5 March, estimates the combined cost of implementing short-term and long-term research priorities for autism at nearly $800 million—but has no authority to appropriate federal money.

“It's not actually dictating to anybody about what research must be funded,” says Tom Insel, director of the US National Institute of Mental Health and chair of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), which wrote the plan. “Our hope is that now that this document is available, the various agencies will be able to use this to help set priorities for funding in autism.”

The plan emphasizes underfunded areas of research, particularly biomedical treatments and environmental risk factors, Insel adds.

Although autism scientists are generally optimistic about the plan, some take issue with its skewed focus on childhood.

“Pretty much all the money [in autism research] has gone into early childhood etiology. We know very little about what happens in adulthood,” says Paul Shattuck, assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis, who participated in one of the scientific workshops organized by the IACC.

The priorities may be especially useful now that the economic stimulus bill has passed: the $8.2 billion it allocated to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research must be spent by 2010. Of that money, the NIH has set aside $200 million to fund at least 200 'Challenge' grants, one of which calls for carrying out studies in the IACC's plan.