Treatment with old drug suramin corrects autism symptoms in mouse model

Testing a new theory, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have used a newly discovered function of an old drug to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the devastating disorder. The findings are published in the March 13, 2013 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers tested suramin - a well-known inhibitor of purinergic signaling used medically for the treatment of African sleeping sickness since shortly after it was synthesized in 1916 – in mice. They found that this antipurinergic therapy (APT) mediator corrected autism-like symptoms in the animal model, even if the treatment was started well after the onset of symptoms. The drug restored 17 types of multi-symptom abnormalities including normalizing brain synapse structure, cell-to-cell signaling, social behavior, motor coordination and normalizing mitochondrial metabolism.

Opportunity to develop completely new class of drugs