It is our great pleasure to announce that Dr Ewelina Knapska, from the laboratory of Defensive Conditioned Reflexes at the Nencki Institute, has been awarded at Polish-Swiss Research Programme.

The project entitled “Validation of tissue- and age-specific therapeutic intervention on synaptopathies relevant to autism spectrum disorders” will be carried out in collaboration with prof. Hans-Peter Lipp (Neuroscience Center Zurich and Institute of Anatomy, University of Zurich).

The main goal of the project is to assess the feasibility of cellular-level therapies of autism. In two genetically modified mouse strains, serving as animal models for autism, the expression of the missing gene will be locally restored to verify whether pathological changes resulting from malfunctioning of synapses during development can be reversed this way.