Promise Seen in Drug for Intellectual Disabilities and Autism

An experimental drug succeeded in a small clinical trial in bringing about what the researchers called substantial improvements in the behaviors associated with retardation and autism in people with fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited cause of these mental disabilities.
The surprising results, disclosed in an interview this week by Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant that makes the drug, grew out of three decades of painstaking genetic research, leaps in the understanding of how the brain works, the advocacy of families who refused to give up, and a chance meeting between two scientists who mistakenly showed up at the same conference.