A U T I S M
1 IN 31
Children Identified with ASD
1
$461 Billion
Annual cost of Autism in the U.S.
2
0
FDA-Approved Core Treatments
Why are we still treating Autism as a psychiatric condition?
For a century Autism has been diagnosed by its behaviors. Today, in the United States, that represents an astonishing 1 in 31 children. Autism remains a condition without a single FDA-approved medication for its core symptoms. It is time to look beyond behavior modification alone for solutions and consider biology on the cellular level.
We’ve been here before.
Until 1921, Juvenile, or Type-1 Diabetes, was similarly misunderstood. Lacking an understanding of the underlying biology, doctors managed it with severe food restrictions, even recommending starvation diets to manage this mystery ailment.
The discovery of insulin in 1922 literally shifted the landscape overnight. Reframing Juvenile Diabetes as a treatable diagnosis transformed the trajectory of millions of lives then and now. Starvation treatments were replaced with daily injections and a future of real possibilities. The rest is history.
The work to end Juvenile Diabetes is still far from over, but there are now a multitude of tools available to help overcome limitations created by biology so that these children can grow up and fulfill dreams that would have been impossible 100 years ago.
Can Autism also be reframed?
In 2013, researchers at University of California San Diego identified what they believed was a fundamental metabolic immune defense mechanism that they labeled Cell Danger Response (CDR) - a highly evolved "security system" that all mammals possess as part of their basic biology.
When cells detect a threat – infection, toxin, or stress - they release ATP, the body's energy molecule, outside the cell's membrane, creating a "danger signal." This signal triggers a protective immune response, clinically referred to as inflammation, to fight the threat. Once the threat passes, the cells return to their normal state turning down the associated immune-mediated inflammation.
These scientists postulated that in Autism, this danger signal remains in the "on" position, leaving the cells in a persistent state of defense, even though the threat is no longer present. What causes this in the first place is still largely unknown, involving complex heterogeneous genetics.
Suramin, the drug these same researchers used to demonstrate this new framing of Autism, had been previously shown to block receptors that activate a specific immune pathway that they thought was causing this broken signal, preventing cells from exiting the "danger" mode to resume their normal metabolic functions.
Kuvatris Therapeutics published the results of the first, multi-dose trial using Suramin in Autistic children, in a peer reviewed journal in 2023.
These data indicated a potential turning point. Using Suramin at specific doses to target the receptors that manage immune response, improvements in core symptoms were observed: language, social avoidance and repetitive behaviors improved when compared to placebo.
Autism could be profoundly changed by a reframing of how we view its fundamental biology and therefore its potential treatment.
By targeting the underlying immune mediated inflammation, as defined by the CDR framework, treatments like Suramin could redefine the landscape of Autism treatment.
Autism - long overdue for its "insulin moment."