“To solve the greatest brain and mind challenges of our era by striving for excellence, fostering partnerships and empowering people”
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) affects 1 in 70 Australian children and is a life-long condition. ASD can have a significant impact on the quality of life of people living with the condition and their families. Effective treatments are limited and are often costly or involve time-intensive behavioural therapy.
People with ASD often have atypical attention, which is one reason they can find life more challenging. The development of therapies which help people with ASD to maintain and switch their attention appropriately would be of great benefit.
While there is a clear need for therapies which favourably influence attention, there is a lack of effective therapeutic discovery processes to date.
Through validating a pre-clinical mouse model, Florey researchers will be able to discover and test potential therapies to improve attention in those with ASD.
These findings can then be translated to human clinical testing, offering hope for those living with the challenges of ASD.
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Our donation to this organisation is made possible through our relationship with Hearts and Minds Investments. Hearts and Minds Investments (HM1:ASX) is a unique listed investment company striving to deliver attractive equity investment returns for shareholders, while providing funding for Australian medical research. The HM1 portfolio is a mix of the highest conviction ideas pitched by invitation at the SOHN Hearts and Minds annual conference, as well as via the six core managers, of which TDM is proud to be included. HM1’s charitable goal is made possible by waiving typical investment fees and instead, making a donation to the suite of HM1 medical research beneficiaries. As such, TDM donates its proportion of the allocated 1.5% management fee via the TDM Foundation each year. We approached the donation opportunity as we would any of our potential investments, spending considerable time learning about the medical research industry, what challenges researchers are facing and what the most pressing health issues are on Australia’s horizon and what funding is available. We reviewed more than 70 medical research institutes with an aim to support institutes which are solving the most challenging problems with scalable benefits to the community. At the end of this exhaustive process, we feel privileged to support four projects, the researchers leading them and the institutes backing them.
