For families raising children with profound autism, treatment can require months of intensive therapy, multiple specialists and, in some cases, around-the-clock support. Researchers in Atlanta hope a new $17.25 million investment can help change what treatment looks like.

Marcus Autism Center, a subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University School of Medicine was awarded up to $17.25 million from Aligning Research to Impact Autism, or ARIA, to participate in a new international clinical trials network. Announced Sept. 8, the funding will support research into precision medicine and new treatments for children with profound autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions through the Innovative Medicine and Precision Approaches to Clinical Trials, or IMPACT, Network. 

The award brings Marcus Autism Center’s research funding this year to nearly $40 million. Earlier in 2026, the center received $21.9 million from The Marcus Foundation for what it describes as the largest study to date examining behavioral, brain and genomic biomarkers in children across the autism spectrum and related genetic conditions.

For Dr. Ami Klin, director and principal investigator of Marcus Autism Center, the latest funding addresses a population he says has historically been difficult both to study and treat.

“These are children who not only have the social disabilities and the communication difficulties that impact children with autism, but they typically require around-the-clock support,” Klin said in an interview with SaportaReport. 

Marcus Autism Center was founded by Atlanta philanthropist Bernie Marcus in 1991 and became integrated with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University School of Medicine in 2008, Klin said. Today, the center specializes in treating children with profound autism, including those with significant intellectual disabilities, communication challenges and severe behavioral needs.

Much of the treatment currently available is behavioral. Marcus Autism Center uses applied behavior analysis, or ABA, to help children develop functional communication and address behaviors including aggression, self-injury and elopement, or wandering away from a safe environment.

Those interventions can be resource-intensive. Klin said treatment for severe behavioral challenges can involve four adults working with one child for three to six months.

“Needless to say, this is enormously expensive,” Klin said. “Because it’s so expensive, we can only treat a minority of the children who require those treatments.”

The IMPACT Network is intended to move beyond behavioral interventions by bringing together 12 research sites, 10 in the United States and two internationally, to explore biology-based treatments. Marcus Autism Center is one of the initial sites and received the highest level of funding available in the first round. 

The network’s first project, the ARIA IMPACT-Ready study, will follow people with profound autism and related neurodevelopmental conditions over time to better understand how their conditions develop and affect daily life. That research is expected to lay the groundwork for future clinical trials. 

One major focus will be precision medicine, tailoring treatment to the biological causes of an individual child’s condition rather than relying primarily on treatments designed to work broadly across patients.

“Precision medicine means finding what, for a given child, has caused the condition, so that you can then tailor your new treatment specifically to that child,” Klin said. 

Researchers will explore advanced approaches including gene therapies and direct brain stimulation. Klin said the network will initially study profound autism alongside five specific genetic conditions, with the hope of developing treatments that target underlying biological mechanisms. 

For Klin, the broader goal is to give families options that do not currently exist.

“We want them to be in their community with their families, and we want them to thrive,” Klin said. “And in order for them to do that, we need new science.”

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