Partnership with the Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC)

STALICLA is excited to announce a long-term research partnership with the Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC), a leading translational research center for neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

STALICLA is excited to announce a long-term research partnership with the Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC), a leading translational research center for neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Dr Walter Kaufmann is a world leading expert in ASD and member of the DSM-5 autism committee that established the latest set of criteria for the diagnosis of autism as agreed by the American Academy of psychiatry. Dr Kaufmann leads GGC’s treatment initiatives and is also involved in clinical trials and research to advance treatment options for patients with genetic disorders. Currently Chair of Genetic Therapeutics at GGC; Dr Kaufmann will be joining Stalicla’s scientific committee and acting as a special advisor on trial design and endpoints.

GGC’s autism patient cohorts (several hundred patients with autism with well documented records) will be incorporated into future joint clinical trials. It is anticipated that this collaboration will generate preclinical data validating the metabolomic characterization of ASD phenotype 1 patients to support STP1’s FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) submission. Dr Luigi Boccuto (Research Scientist at GGC) will be joining Stalicla as Chief Scientific Officer.

Dr Boccuto comments: “Needless to say, I’m excited to start this project; not only for the opportunity to work with Stalicla’s collaborators, but also because of the potential revolutionary promise the Stalicla approach offers. I believe that the innovative characterization of ASD patients will act as a catalyst to change research approaches for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders. We have already planned potential expansions of GGC’s in vitro studies using different approaches, spanning from expression studies to metabolomics. We are now ready to start recruiting new samples or collecting clinical information from the ones currently in our cohorts in order to reach the numbers required. We plan to complete our cohorts in few months.” Brief biographies.

Luigi Boccuto MD – Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Boccuto is a clinical geneticist and Assistant Professor at the Clemson University School of Health Research. He has trained for several years with Professor Giovanni Neri in Rome, developing expertise in hereditary cancer, overgrowth and intellectual disability syndromes. Luigi then joined the Greenwood Genetic Center (GGC) where he gradually progressed to become Research Scientist focusing on autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability and overgrowth conditions. He has developed his research around the definition of metabolomic profiles applied to several genetic conditions, in order to investigate pathogenic mechanisms, identify molecular biomarkers, and develop novel treatment strategies.