MIT, Harvard Link Autism’s Fever Effect to IL-17a, Launch $2.1 Million Human Biobank Push
Updated
Updated · Boing Boing · Jun 5
MIT, Harvard Link Autism’s Fever Effect to IL-17a, Launch $2.1 Million Human Biobank Push
1 articles · Updated · Boing Boing · Jun 5
Summary
$2.1 million in Marcus Foundation grants will fund MIT and Harvard researchers as they move from mouse findings to a human biobank study of autism’s so-called fever effect.
IL-17a emerged as the key signal after a decade of mouse work showed symptom relief was tied not to heat itself but to an immune molecule that appears to quiet overactive brain circuits during infection.
Direct IL-17a injections into affected mice improved autism-related behaviors even without fever, giving the team a possible path to therapies that could mimic the temporary symptom easing some families report.
Blood and stool samples from volunteers are the next step, as researchers look for the same biological markers in people and test whether the mouse mechanism holds in humans.
An immune molecule calms autism symptoms in mice. Is this the key to the first biological therapy for humans?
Science is unlocking the 'fever effect.' Will the quest for a biological treatment overshadow the neurodiversity movement?
New $2.1M MIT-Harvard Biobank to Unlock Autism "Fever Effect" and Immune Pathways
Overview
A major new initiative by MIT and Harvard Medical School, supported by a $2.1 million grant, is tackling autism by focusing on the 'fever effect'—a phenomenon where some autistic individuals temporarily improve during a fever. Researchers, including Gloria Choi and Jun Huh, have spent years studying this effect in mice and found that the immune molecule IL-17a, not the fever itself, helps calm overactive brain circuits and eases symptoms. Building on these findings, the team is now creating a biobank to collect human samples, aiming to uncover similar immune markers and pave the way for new autism therapies.