No drug has yet been approved to treat the core symptoms of autism.
For over half a century attempts have been made to repurpose existing drugs to treat autism. Clinical trials go back to the 1970s. Even in these early “failed” trials there usually were those who responded to the treatment.
Personalized medicine seeks to treat just one person and accepts that behind an autism diagnosis lie a myriad of possible dysfunctions. The usual attempts to find a one-size-fits-all therapy are doomed from the start.
Great steps forward are possible be reevaluating the existing research and past clinical trials to identify a personalized polytherapy to treat cognitive dysfunction, aggression, lack of speech, sound sensitivity, anxiety, stereotypy and other problem areas.
Each individual with severe autism should have their own polytherapy. Some elements will be lifelong, while others are likely to change as the child get older, approaches puberty and then adulthood. Autism is dynamic and new challenges may well appear and then therapy needs to be adjusted.

Peter has a Master’s degree in Engineering from Imperial College, London and an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Peter comes from a family of doctors, who were all taught that autism is untreatable. Peter discovered after trialing Bumetanide in 2012 that his son’s autism does respond to drug therapy. He then developed a personalized polytherapy, the autism Polypill, to treat his son’s specific phenotype using existing drugs.
He shares the published research and his own insights via his blog Epiphany ASD, with parents,
doctors and some researchers. In 2023 he published a summary of his experiences treating autism in the book “Game Changer – improving the outcome in severe autism using personalized medicine.”
He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Pitt Hopkins Research Foundation.