With a $178,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health, Furman University’s Linnea Freeman aims to help 1 in 36 children in the U.S. who are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) each year by pioneering research on the gut microbiome.
Freeman, an associate professor of biology and neuroscience, will share the National Institute of General Medical Sciences collaborative supplement with former graduate school colleague Brent Wilkerson of the Medical University of South Carolina. Together, they will study the relationship between the gut microbiome and hearing impairment using a mouse model of ASD.
Freeman’s grant is another example of The Furman Advantage at work by providing stipends for two undergraduate student researchers and the cost to run experiments and data analyses on mouse fecal samples. The Furman team will visit MUSC so students can see the auditory experiments Wilkerson’s lab is conducting. By summer, a total of eight undergraduates will be at work on multiple projects in Freeman’s lab based on this award and other funding mechanisms.
The medical community is keenly aware of the gastrointestinal difficulties children with ASD face. Experimental studies using mouse models of ASD have demonstrated that treatments targeting the gut microbiota can lessen behavioral differences, Freeman explained.
So, it wasn’t a dramatic leap for Freeman and Wilkerson to hypothesize that the gut microbiome in a similar model could impact hearing.
Children with ASD often have hearing deficiencies. Freeman and Wilkerson hope a better understanding of the microbiota found in the intestines of mice, and the interplay those microbes have with auditory processing can open the door to therapies and interventions for children on the spectrum.
“If a connection exists between auditory processing and the gut,” Freeman said, “we could look toward an intervention that improves the gut microbiome and ultimately improves hearing.”
Better hearing, especially during the early learning years when ASD is typically diagnosed, could lead to the ability to pick up on social cues for enhanced interpersonal interactions, Freeman added.
Freeman will dive deeper into how the brain and gut “talk to each other,” in what is better known as the gut-brain axis, or the two-way communication channel between the enteric and central nervous systems. The science can be applied to other disorders besides ASD such as obesity, which is diagnosed in one-third of Americans, and conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s where symptoms first show up in the gut, Freeman said.
She hopes the research yields more grant funding to assess the efficacy of nutrition-based interventions such as the introduction of prebiotics. “I think my dream would be to see some type of dietary intervention to improve symptoms a patient is presenting,” she said.
For her part, Freeman is excited to learn more about the auditory system. “It’s a completely new area for me.” But more important, she said, is the experience students will receive in an area that affects millions of children and adults.
“It’s been fascinating to see a greater focus in science to understand the interaction between the gut and the brain,” Freeman said. “There’s so much more we can learn.”
Freeman is a past recipient of SC INBRE’s Bioinformatics Pilot Project Program and Developmental Research Project Program awards, as well as principal investigator on a recent R15 NIH grant.
Written by Tina Underwood, Furman University.