Paris, France
Overview of the GNC's French hub, in Paris.
Christopher Gillberg and Marion Leboyer, Professor of Psychiatry in Paris, started the PARIS-studies in 1989 (Paris Autism Research In Siblings), the first large scale genetic studies in the history of autism.
They gradually recruited a number of outstanding researchers into their group, including Thomas Bourgeron, and much later, Richard Delorme. Since then, Bourgeron and Gillberg together have performed a number of groundbreaking autism genetic studies, including the first study that identified specific synapse-related genes in the pathogenesis of autism in the early 2000s.
Christopher Gillberg is now a Visiting Professor in Bourgeron’s department at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and Bourgeron is a Visiting Professor in Gillberg’s department in Gothenburg, and the collaborative studies go on and on at the international forefront of autism genetic research.