Austin Castle has autism. He and his family plan to take part in an upcoming study, hoping their DNA samples, among others around the world, will help lead to treatments.

"We just feel like, if there's anything we can do to help another family going through this journey with autism, we want to be there and do that for them," Austin's mother Sheila Castle said.

The Thompson Center was recently awarded a $1.6 million grant to join the Simons Simplex Collection Project.

"The big goal, the ultimate goal is to find out as much information as we can to help understand the cause of autism," said Dr. Stephen Kanne, co-investigator for the project.

For the project, the Thompson Center must provide blood samples from at least 300 families during the next three years. The Simons Group, based in New York, will then pool the samples, along with those from 12 other university-based clinics, to create a database larger than any other in the world. The database could lead to answers about autism. Other universities chosen for the grant include Harvard, Yale, and Washington University in St. Louis.