COURTESY OF CHRIS MARKSBURY
AUTISM
Institute at Johns Hopkins University,
where Dr. Richard Kelly had discovered a link between autism and
mitochondrial function.
“Mitochondria is the power generator in our cells, breaking down
nutrients to create energy. When the
mitochondria malfunction, the body’s
organs, including the brain, may lack
the energy to work and develop properly,” Hasson says, causing potential
side effects like developmental delays,
social impairment and intellectual disability, all common in autistic
children.
“Dr. Kelly’s research and clinical
work for more than 30 years connected mitochondrial dysfunction with
autism,” she says, “and he had found
a formula to optimize mitochondrial
function through a precise combination of vitamins and other naturallyoccurring compounds.”
Hasson called her local compounding pharmacy and put together Jake’s
exact dose. “It was expensive, it
smelled like fish and tasted awful, but
he was only 4 so I forced him to drink
it. And within six weeks he was talking, walking and really connected,”
she says.
By age 8, Jake had had enough.
“He wouldn’t drink the liquid anymore
and taking it in pill form required 30
to 50 pills a day. I couldn’t force him
at that age, so he stopped, and within
three weeks he had really regressed,”
she says.
Hasson was referred to the
Developmental Neuropsychiatry
Program at Columbia University
where she met Dr. Suzanne Goh,
a pediatric neurologist and
mitochondrial researcher. Together,
they tried a year of different
“We need to create
awareness of mitochondrial
dysfunction so that
parents and physicians
know it’s real and that we
can do something about it.”
Michelle Hasson
therapies before deciding Jake needed
to be back on the formula.
“My career had been in drug
development, so Dr. Goh and I called
Dr. Kelly and said we
need to find a way to make this
formula into an easy, mild-tasting,
concentrated dose,” says Hasson.
After a year in development,
during which Jake used other therapies, they had successfully created the
tasteless, high-potency powder that
would later be called MitoSpectra.
“The human body has around a
hundred trillion cells and almost all
of them have mitochondria,” Goh,
MitoMedical’s chief medical officer,
says. “MitoSpectra gets inside the cell
with key vitamins and compounds to >
SPECIAL PARENT | 2017 EDITION 27