(Photo by Flickr/PuppiesAreProzac)

A bio-pharmaceutical company, Cellceutix, has released details about a study that could be a milestone in the fight for a cure along the autism spectrum.

In the study, Dr. Krishna Menon compared two groups of rats that were both injected with a serum that induces autismlike symptoms, and one group was injected with the compound KM-391.

According to the group, the compound had stunning results on the group, and had the group excelling at significantly better rates than the group that did not get injected with KM-391. In fact, over 3 months, the group that had taken KM-391 had experienced an 80% improvement that the other group had not.

Chief Financial Officer of Cellceutix, Leo Ehrlich, had this to say on his company’s breakthrough: “Right now, there are drugs that address the symptoms, like hypertension. They might give them Ritalin. We addressed the three or four causes of autism.”

While Ehrlich is excited about the study, he refrained from referring to the results as leading to a cure. He urged people to remember that autism falls on a spectrum, and what works for one case might not work for another. He also insisted that the study had long way to go before it could hit the market.

Ehrlich added: “Basically in pharmaceuticals, if it doesn’t work on animals it won’t work on humans. If it does work on animals, it might work on humans. So this gives it a good chance that we can move forward and do tests on children. Of course we have to do toxicity tests first. In our company, we think it will be about a year. To be on the market, we’d be talking three to four years, if everything went smoothly.”