Genetic Engineering of Nonhuman Primate Models for Studying Neurodevelopmental Disorders

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), represent a group of highly prevalent, early onset conditions featured by neural and behavioral impairments with a strong genetic basis. Effective treatments for patients with ASD have yet to be developed due to the limited understanding of their pathophysiology and the lack of animal models that recapitulate neural and behavioral traits. Recent advances in genetic technology, such as viral-mediated transgene and CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene-editing, enabled the engineering of nonhuman primate models of genetic disorders. This provides us with an unprecedented opportunity to better approximate the neural and behavioral manifestations of NDDs in the affected human individual.