Every day, scientists and geneticists are working to find a cure for Tourette Syndrome. What if you could actually be a part of the research taking place that could someday usher a cure into existence? You can! Join the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome & Associated Disorders’ (NJCTS) efforts and personally be part of making that happen — and you don’t even have to be from New Jersey to do it!
Dr. Robert King, a professor of child psychiatry at the Yale University Medical School and medical director of the TS/OCD Clinic at the Yale University Child Study Center, will be at the Cell and DNA Repository at Rutgers University all day on Thursday and Friday, September 26 and 27, to interview individuals and families interested in participating in the National Institute of Mental Health NJCTS Genetics Sharing Program.
For more information or to schedule an appointment with Dr. King, please e-mail Dr. Gary Heiman, a team leader at the repository, at familystudy@biology.rutgers.edu. If you are from another state or country, please state that in your e-mail and the necessary arrangements and steps will be made and addressed.
Dr. King visits Rutgers each month to conduct these interviews, and in April he spearheaded a grand rounds presentation for NJCTS at Monmouth Medical Center. If you have yet to see the TS research taking place at the repository, check out the tour given to New Jersey legislators in May!
“The major stumbling block to doing research on Tourette Syndrome has been a lack of DNA samples,” according to Dr. Jay A. Tischfield, Director of the Human Genetics Institute at Rutgers University and a researcher on TS for more than 40 years. “You can’t just do research on samples from five or 10 people. You need hundreds if not thousands of samples.”
For more information, download a repository brochure, visit the home page for the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository or see the event listings on the NJCTS Facebook page.