Stephan Sanders, BMBS, Ph.D.

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Stephan Sanders, BMBS, Ph.D.

Position: Scientific Advisory Board Member

Dr. Sanders is an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Sander’s research focuses on using genomics and bioinformatics to understand the etiology of human disease, especially ASD. Using genomic methods, his work has helped characterize the role of de novo mutation in the etiology of ASD and identified multiple ASD risk loci including duplications of the 7q11.23 William’s Syndrome region and mutations in the sodium channel gene SCN2A. His work on the integration of CNV and exome data across multiple ASD cohorts recently identified 71 ASD risk loci.

In addition, he worked as part of a group that integrated spatiotemporal gene expression data from the human brain with these ASD-associated genes. This approach has implicated deep layer glutamatergic neurons in the frontal cortex during mid-fetal development in the causation of ASD. Dr. Sanders trained as a pediatric physician in the UK before beginning a research career in genomics and bioinformatics with a Ph.D. and postdoctoral research position at Yale.