Ted Abel, director of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute and Interim Chair and DEO of the Department of Pharmacology, has received a Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI) award to continue his research into autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). The project, “Translating Drug Discovery in Zebrafish and Mouse Models of ASD Risk Genes” is led by Ellen Hoffman, an Assistant Professor at Yale University and will utilize the expertise of the Hoffman lab in zebrafish pharmaco-behavioral profiling and the Abel lab in mouse behavioral phenotyping. In addition, George Richerson, the Chair of Neurology at the University of Iowa, will lead one of the main components of this project by studying the relationship between seizures and behavioral phenotypes in mouse models relevant to ASDs, and the potential pharmacological rescue of these phenotypes. This proposal will translate findings from high-throughput zebrafish behavior-based screens to mouse behavioral assays, with the aim of elucidating the cellular and circuit-level effects of drug candidates in both systems. The overall aim of this proposal is to bridge a critical gap in translational drug discovery, leading to the identification of novel pharmacological targets for further evaluation in ASDs.