Elliott Sherr M.D., Ph.D.
Assisant Professor
of Neurology
Phone: 415-514-9306
Email: SherrE@neuropeds.ucsf.edu
Box: #0114
Dr. Sherr's lab studies the genetics of autism and epilepsy, both as a means to better understand normal brain function and to work toward novel therapies. For autism, we study patients and animal models for which there is a disruption of cerebral connectivity, the most common example of this being agenesis or absence of the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the largest white matter tract in the brain, with 200 million axons. It is absent in a significant subset of patients with autistic features, exemplified by Kim Peek, whose life was fictionalized in the movie Rain Man. Dr. Sherr's lab is using linkage analysis, candidate gene, and CNV discovery approaches, coupled with careful clinical and imaging phenotyping, to identify ACC genes for further analysis in forward genetics using mouse models. They are also conducting reverse genetics in mice, as absence of the corpus callosum in these models is also associated with autistic-like behaviors. In a separate line of investigation, Dr. Sherr is studying the causes of severe childhood epilepsies, infantile spasms, Lennox Gastaut and epileptic encephalopathies, using similar genetic approaches.
