- [Announcer] And now an Arizona PBS Original Production.

- This time on catalyst dogs.

Many of us think of them as family members, for some people they're our best friends but dogs are so close to us, biologically, that we share many of the same ailments, like cancer.

One innovative scientist, thinks that shared vulnerability, could lead to a new way to treat the disease, that could work for both humans and dogs, (dog barking) Crowded, noisy, chaotic.

That's what many animal shelters have become, because of a crush of animals needing adoption.

Could we redesign dog shelters to be a better experience for both the dogs, and the humans who come here to find a new pet?

And children with autism face challenges, but a pair of scientists has a bold new approach to treating autism symptoms.

They're taking in data to brains, but at the stomachs of autistic people.

- (Announcer) Catalyst, is supported by Knowledge Enterprise Development at Arizona State University.

Advancing entrepreneurship, innovation, discovery, and knowledge for the public good.

- Life has problems.

Science turns them into questions that can lead to solutions and even innovations.

This is Catalyst Shaping the Future, through science research at Arizona State University.

- Thanks for watching Catalyst, I'm Steve Filmer.

Thousands of years ago, we humans, had to move around, or migrate, to find what we needed to stay alive.

At some point we crossed paths with wolves, and those wolves with time and breeding became our dogs.

Archeologists believed that was as many as 10 or 15,000 years ago.

Since that time, dogs have been helping in our survival with things like herding and hunting.

And even in this age of medical breakthroughs, dogs are still there helping to make our lives better.

- Mark.

Take it!

Dogs are very much, an important part of our lives, and have been for a long time.

We're very active with the dogs.

We do a lot of training, in all different kinds of venues.

Obedience training, a lot of tracking training and exhibiting, rally and agility, and hunting retriever tests, and a lot of different things.

That's our hobby.

And we really enjoy doing that.

Enjoy being with the dogs and when they're not training, they're sitting around the house with us.

Over!

They're just a very close part of our lives, and we enjoy spending this time with them.

- Good to go.

- [Filmer] Bonds we humans form with our dogs can out last the lives of our pets.

Bob and Lori Rollins have lost Several dogs, but keep bringing in new ones to become members of their family.

- These are the golden retrievers, number seven and eight that we've had in the last 40 years.

And we lost three of the previous six, to one form of cancer or another.

- Such a good boy.

Cancer is a devastating disease on family.

Whether that family member has two legs or four legs, I think it affects a lot of us in the same ways.

For many of us, our pets are part of our family.

For many of my clients, their pets are their children.

They may not have two legged children and these may be their family members.

And so, navigating treatment decisions, how aggressive do they want to be?

Do they even want to treat it all?

What's the likely outcome?

What are the potential side effects?

These are often things, that may just be moving forward, if it's a two legged person that gets diagnosed with cancer, someone sets the path of this is what we need to do to treat the cancer.

In veterinary medicine, owners are really responsible for making a lot of those decisions.

So, they bear a very heavy burden making those decisions for their family members.

And when the cancer advances, and the quality of life is no longer good for those animals, owners are then faced with a decision to say goodbye.

And losing a pet for many of these people is as devastating as losing a family member to cancer.

- So many people have lost their poor kids to cancer much too soon.

Golden retrievers have a higher rate of cancer than a lot of other dogs.

It's always been a concern of mine with Sierra.

She is in very good health, she's going to be seven, so my concern, has grown with each year that has passed.

- I'm Jenna Burton, and I am a veterinary oncologist at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

And I'm also the director of our veterinary center for clinical trials.

The big part of the work that I do, is conducting clinical trials in dogs.

And a lot of those clinical trials are aimed at improving the care that dogs and cats with cancer get.

Can we find ways to make treatment safer, and more tolerable and more effective.

Some of the times, the results from those studies can then go on, and not just apply to veterinary medicine, but may also go on and apply to human medicine as well.

- When you visit a dog park, you will sometimes meet dogs that almost seem to have personalities that match their owners.

From a standpoint of biology, of course, humans and dogs are both mammals.

And when you look at diseases, something like cancer, if a cancer therapy works on a dog, there's a chance it might also work on people.

And that is the starting point for one very innovative researcher.

- Dogs get cancer in almost exactly the same rate, that people do over their lifetime, about 30 to 40%.

Many of the cancers, look almost exactly like what the humans get.

Humans get a big uptake in the probability, of getting cancer around 55, 60 years old.

It's six years with dogs.

And the compression time is where it may be latent for 10 or 20 years and kill people, it's one 10th that time in dogs - [Filmer] That parallel between dogs and humans, when it comes to cancer, has Stephen Johnston pursuing a very big idea.

Johnston is a researcher, at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona state university.

His study calls for lots of dogs.

- So,it was designed to be statistically rigorous, so hence the large number of dogs, hence the use of placebo control.

There's going to be 800 dogs enrolled in this study across three sites.

So, UC Davis, Colorado state, university of Wisconsin, there's a lot of initial visits, scene screening visits to make sure dogs are eligible.

The screening visits are a little bit longer and intensive because we really want to make sure that these dogs are healthy, and we don't find evidence of cancer that maybe just hasn't declared itself or become evident yet.

These are healthy dogs, that may or may not develop cancer, over the course of their lives.

So, we need to give them that timeframe that five-year window, over which that may be likely to happen.

So, we're not going to have information next year or the following year, but I think these will be results worth waiting for.

- [Filmer] Cancer can appear suddenly in dogs and humans.

So Johnston's idea is to have cells primed to beat cancer to the punch.

- The hottest thing out there now, in cancer vaccines, is to take a bit of a tumor after you've had the tumor, DNA sequence it, find its mutations, and then make a personal vaccine for you.

A process that will take about four months and cost a hundred thousand dollars.

This is after you have cancer.

What we thought of many years ago, over 10 years ago, is that the ideal solution would be not to get cancer in the first place.

And so, could we design a vaccine that works just like your infectious disease vaccines.

The emphasis there, is to get an antibody response for the infection that you're going to get.

And that's generally what they measure, it turns out that for tumors, antibodies don't seem to have much of a role.

You need this cellular response, this other arm of the immune system to work.

So, we've designed our vaccine specifically to try and get that cellular response into your memory.

The vaccine that the dogs are getting, is designed more on the protocol that we try to use for infectious disease vaccines, but with a special twist.

- [Filmer] By now, we're all too familiar with vaccines, for things like flu and COVID.

These work by priming an immune response to specific viruses.

But unlike a virus, cancer starts within a body's own cells.

We respond by making what are called, T-cells to fight back.

- The first part is, is a DNA vaccine and that sort of sets up the system.

We give it to everybody before they have a tumor.

So, we're hoping to create very high affinity, very aggressive T-cells that will look for your tumor and go kill it.

And then when a tumor is just starts, when it's very small, not so big, you have to do surgery or anything.

You may not even know you have it.

Your immune system would kill the tumor.

And that's what we're testing, with this dog vaccine right now.

- [Filmer] This big double blind study has meant hundreds of pets and their owners, have committed to regular clinic visits for blood tests, even though half of all the dogs, are getting a placebo, instead of the vaccine treatment.

- For the duration of the study, the five beard, she is going to be monitored, and getting blood work, even if she's not getting the actual vaccine, just being monitored we could detect something, long before we would know if she wasn't in the study, we would be not taking her to our vet until symptoms appeared, and many times that's too late, So, there's the added benefit of that.

- We think that it's a very important study that has some tremendous potential benefits for, golden retrievers and for other breeds of dogs.

Cancer is obviously a big concern and golden retrievers, many golden retrievers suffer from various kinds of cancers, and so we'd like to do what we can, to help find some prevention for that.

I'm a biologist background, So, I have some familiarity with biological studies and double-blind studies, and I realized that you have to do this in order to determine whether a particular treatment, is effective or not.

We realized that the benefit is, probably not going to be for us, or for our dogs immediately, but it's going to be for dogs in the future.

- I'm used to the clinical, the human clinical side.

So, I expected the biggest challenge was to get enough people to want to enroll their dogs.

Now, all of vets told me that will be no problem, but I didn't believe them, I thought this was going to be a big problem to get 800 dogs enrolled.

This is by far the largest interventional dog trial ever done.

- When I heard about this, my heart was just in it immediately.

And I knew it was something important that we had to do.

I want Sierra to live her best and healthiest life, and I want that for all, of her canine friends, family - It would be awesome if we could reduce and prevent cancer in our pet dogs, that would be fabulous, I would love it, if I had less patients on a given day.

- What I was more impressed by, how many people were enrolling here because of what they want to do for people.

Yes, they care about dogs and they don't want dogs to get cancer, but they also see the possibility, this might have some attack on people in the future.

- This is just the way scientific investigation works.

You need to do this kind of thing, You need to be devoted, to the benefit of the future rather than the present.

- The next milestone will be, that we see any indication that it's working.

Are we preventing, any tumors in the dogs getting the vaccine, versus dogs that are getting the placebo?

As soon as we see any indication on that point, we have safety.

And then we have any indication of efficacy, we will initiated human safety trial.

The human safety trials for vaccines are relatively simple in short, they usually enroll 20, 30 people and they take a few months.

The efficacy part, how do you test the trial on people?

where the timeframe unlike dogs is about tenfold longer than dogs.

How do you design such a trial?

And we have some ideas about how to do that.

A lot of people think that it's too daunting a problem.

We will never be able to test the vaccine like this.

And we've been told that multiple times I don't believe that's true.

I think we can do a human safety, and efficacy trial in a relatively short time and get this into people like you and me.

- [Filmer] If Johnston's idea succeeds with dogs and then moves on to be tested in humans, it could re-imagine how cancer is treated.

- So recurrent theme in everything we've been doing, is that we want to not only revolutionize the treatments but we want to democratize them.

We want the best treatment be available to everybody, not just, people that can afford a $100, and that's always been a theme, for everything we've done.

- I think that, yeah, there's a chance that this isn't going to work, but what if it does, what if we can, what if we can decrease or prevent cancer in dogs.

And then what if we can take that information, and go on and look to see if we can do the same in people.

Wouldn't that be amazing, and a huge leap forward.

But I don't think you can make huge advances forward without taking fake leaps, and maybe you miss, but what if you end up.

- The idea of a dedicated standalone dog park like this one, only became popular about 20 years ago.

But even further back in time than that the idea of a dog pound, the place where lost or unwanted dogs had to go, that was already getting some fresh new thinking.

Dog pounds of course, are now dog shelters, and science is getting behind the idea, of looking for ways to make dog shelters better.

Better living conditions for the dogs that must live in them, and better experiences for the people, who come to the shelter, to adopt a new friend.

(dog barking) This is the daily reality for some 6.5 million animals up for adoption in the US right now.

Could we discover new ways to improve their environment, minimize stress, and speed up their adoption.

Researchers from Arizona state university, are working at the Animal Humane Society headquarters in golden Valley, Minnesota, to try to find an answer.

- We don't really know a lot, about how to house dogs.

How do we care for dogs temporarily, when they don't have an owner?

We're trying to better the lives of dogs in shelters.

And so to do that, you have to go to the shelters.

We don't always spend enough time thinking about how things are going to change in five 10 or 20 years.

And so, we tend to build for or plan for the moment, rather than the potential.

And so, there's not a lot of evolution, in how we are providing housing for the animals in our care.

Some advances have been made in terms of, making those spaces look a little nicer, doing more enrichment.

But, really I think that we have a huge opportunity, that has not been realized to this point on, how we really change the experience of a dog or cat in a shelter, based on their living environment, While they're with us.

The shelter environment can be, sort of uniquely stressful.

It's kind of a funny place, especially, for dogs that are maybe coming in from home environments, or dogs that were previously in another shelter that were in foster that are coming back.

And so, certainly dogs under our care experience both good stress and bad stress, and it can be anything, from getting a toy, or the anticipation of feeding time, or visitations with our guests that come in and want to meet dogs.

Just like people, every dog is an individual, So, every dog is going to experience the shelter environment, a little bit differently.

- If they're going to be at the shelter, even for just a few days, maybe it's a week, maybe it's two weeks whatever the timeframe, I think we want to be thinking about what are you experiencing here?

And how can we make it better?

- We developed a large community space that's social for the dogs.

The dogs get the opportunity to see, and hear, and smell, and play with the other dogs, that are living with them, as well as have regular, and ongoing interaction with the people.

- [Filmer] These pictures show, what the new improved concept of a dog shelter space will look like.

This is the space they're testing the dogs in.

- [Liv] The habitat is up on our adoption floor, it's this beautiful open space where people can see in and out, and dogs can see in and out.

And so, there's a lot going on, it's a pretty busy place.

- Dogs that are ordinarily happy and playful, can inside of a crowded shelter space become timid or shy or even aggressive.

And that's why researchers are looking to see, whether if in the shelter space, dogs can get more, dog and dog one-on-one time, and improve their personalities, and their overall disposition, making them much more ready to be adopted.

- Here, we're taking a look at, how do we house the dogs, but also how do we allow for time with other dogs, to see if that can improve their welfare.

- [Liv] We are currently, trying to figure out what the benefits are, of dog to dog interaction for animals, while they're staying here with us in shelter.

- [Filmer] They compare the experiences, of the same dogs when they stay in a space, that's more like the old traditional stalls, in a typical shelter, to the experiences they have, in the new space.

- Several times a day, dogs are coming out and having interactive times, play times with other dogs.

And so, with all the information we're gathering, we're really hoping to get an answer to what that benefit might be.

And what extent that benefit is that dogs experience from getting to socialize with other dogs.

- we might see things that make us think that, the dog's level of stress is reduced, and that they're having a better experience.

And how do we confirm that?

And so, asking Lisa and her team to come from ASU to partner with us, was really important for us, to be able to put the science behind that.

- [Filmer] It takes hard work to get to the hard science, the data to measure what's happening inside the dogs.

It means taking samples of yes, what comes out of the dogs, when they come outside to relieve themselves.

- As a behaviorist, I'm always observing the animals, and taking a look at what they're doing, and so for us, for example, when we're walking out with the dogs and we have to collect their urine, or their feces, taking a look at what they're doing and being as low impact as possible, not scaring them with our collection tool, and making sure they have a good time outside, while that could kind of seem warm and fuzzy.

That's how we get data from them.

If they're scared of us, if they don't want to go on walks if in this case, for example, if they were worried about, going back to their kennels, and we didn't take the time to help them get comfortable about going back, and that means using food with them, and helping them have positive experiences, we would get no data.

We just take them outside, and let them naturally exhibit their behavior, go out for a potty walk, just like you would with your pet dog.

And that's when we get our biological samples.

From the urine we are getting cortisol, which is the stress hormone.

And from faecal samples, we're getting what's called, IgA which is a measure of their immune function.

We also have the dogs wearing doggy Fitbits.

So, we collect accelerometer data, that helps us learn more about how the dogs are moving around, and how they're resting.

And then we also have audiometers, that hang from the ceiling, and that helps us collect data about the decibel levels.

So that we can understand more about the noise that the dogs are experiencing, because we know that noise, impacts the welfare of the dogs.

So, those are some of the data that we're collecting, to try to understand more about how housing and social interactions, impact the dogs, while they're in the shelter.

- [Filmer] The ultimate goal of research like this, is to gain a better understanding of a dog's stressors, and how shelters can take these findings, and move towards making a dog stay there, to be one of, enrichment and comfort.

The more relaxed the dog is, the more authentic of an interaction can be had, when meeting potential families.

Just like humans, putting your best foot forward may not be the easiest thing to do, in a high stress environment.

So, the creation of a space where dogs, can represent their true personalities, makes the chances of finding their forever home, that much better.

- We certainly hope, that whatever we learn, can inform how we house dogs, not only here at Animal Humane Society but nationwide or worldwide.

And so, that's ultimately our goal here is everything we learn, we want it to be able to share that with other shelters, and the whole sheltering and community.

We certainly want everyone to benefit from what we're learning, and also to help find a way for everyone, to be able to do what we find out works.

So, it's not only what works, how do we implement that and how can other shelters implement that as well?

- And it's important, for us to be able to do that so that, when we invest a larger amount of money, and build a facility, that's meant to replicate this model throughout that we're building the best thing that we can, and being the best steward of the resources that our donors are giving us to do this.

And we want to be able to influence on a broader regional and national level, how we start to think about, housing for dogs and cats and how we might be able to modify and change that.

And with the science behind it we can bring that forward in a more impactful way.

- It's really important, to ask the question of where dogs in shelters get benefit from?

Is it the human piece?

Human interaction piece?

Is it the dog to dog interaction piece?

And really what benefit is that, that they're getting so that, when we look forward to, future buildings, future sites, future ways we want to design a building.

We can not only support, what we've learned, and are learning through this process.

Not only support what helps dogs and shelter but also, really facilitate those interactions, be it human to dog or dog to dog.

And so, I think it's really important that we're asking these big picture questions of, is there a benefit and what benefit is it?

- In terms of takeaways, i think we're just scratching the surface about how we can change sheltering and change the lives of the dogs in the shelter for the better.

- [Filmer] In the future dog shelters may not just facilitate the adoption of dogs.

Shelters could be taking a more long-term role, into the lives of dogs and their families, well past their adoption.

Offering services like training, and medical care.

- And now we're thinking not only about, like the dogs that are perfect.

But we're starting to help dogs, that have medical problems, dogs that have behavior problems.

I think it's really exciting that now this kind of new phase, of thinking about welfare, it's not just about acquiring it, and it goes and lives its happy life, but, would you need medical care sometime in the dog's life?

Could you come to the shelter to receive that?

What about training classes?

What about any activities that help you be part of this community?

And then even thinking once your dog passes away, going to a grief support groups.

So, I think there's a lot of different ways, that the shelter is moving beyond just acquisition, and really being involved in the life of the dog.

So, moving beyond the four walls of the shelter.

How can we help you with housing?

How can we help you with training?

What are the challenges you're facing, that if you want to keep this dog, what can we do to help you?

- So, adopting a dog from a shelter, is the first step, for a lot of first time dog owners.

But what is really going on between dogs and people.

A scientist is looking at the emotional and even psychological connections, between dogs and humans, but get ready, what he's finding may force you to unload some of your baggage and beliefs, about what is going on with dog breeds, and what it means about dog behavior.

- If you have a dog, the first question, a stranger will ask you about your dog, is what kind of dog do you have?

And they're expecting you to say, I have a spaniel, or I have this that dark cross, right?

That's the kind of answer people are expecting.

I think people talk about breeds of dogs , as if they're models of car.

I'm Clive Wynne, I'm a professor of psychology at Arizona State University and my specialty, is the behavior of dogs and their wild relatives, in dogs relationships with human beings.

If you tell somebody you have a Border Collie, people have a certain of expectations of what a Border Collie is like.

Now, cause there's some truth in this, over the past two centuries, people did very intensely breed dogs together, to create the modern breeds.

And they have certain characteristics.

People know the Border Collies liked to herd things, right?

If you don't have any sheep, your Border Collies is going to hurt the cat, it's going to hurt the children, but, I think that people take this interest, in breeds much too far, because the majority of us, we don't have any sheep.

We're just looking for a companion for our homes.

If you just put on one side for a moment, the herding behaviors of herding dogs, which most of us don't care about, anyway, and you ask questions like, is this a friendly animal?

Is this a confident animal?

General personality questions, Is this an extrovert individual?

The breed doesn't make much difference.

The breed really makes much much less difference than people expect.

And in fact, there is just as much, variability within each breed.

It's not like buying a car, If I wanted to buy a Honda accord, I could test drive, a Honda accord at one dealership, and then make up my mind and buy that model at a dealership on the other side of the country.

Because we could be confident, that Honda have enough quality control, But my experience of test driving in Phoenix, will ring true of the car I might buy in Seattle, Washington, right?

And people take that mindset to their dogs and they act as if, well, you know, my friend had a Border Collie, I liked his Border Collie, So I'll get myself a Border Collie and I'll have the experience that my friend has with shape, right?

That's not true.

- Another scientific tool that, our notion about dog breeds and behavior, doesn't stand the test against, is genetics.

If you look at a DNA map of a dog's history, even if it's a pure breed dog, it's going to show a certain amount of crossbreeding.

It's going to show contact with traits, that don't show up in that dog's eye color, four color or body features.

And in a lot of ways, we get way too hung up on dog, genealogy instead of personality.

- Lisa Contra, and I have done studies showing, that people are more influenced, by the breed label than they are, by the animal in front of them.

And we see this particularly, when it comes to breed labels that most people find unattractive.

And Lisa did a study, where she showed people photographs, and video recordings of dogs at the shelter.

If the label is present, the label Pit Bull is present.

People really don't want to adopt that dog.

You show people the same pictures, the same videos, and you leave out the breed identification.

People can find those dogs, perfectly attractive as indeed they are, perfectly attractive dogs most of them.

So what we see is, that people are very influenced by the label.

They're more influenced by the label, than the actual animal in front of them, they're not looking at the animal, they're not interviewing the candidate.

They're just reading the information.

When you're looking at living beings, you need to meet the individual, you need to interview the candidate.

It's much more like dealing with our own species.

Every sensible person realizes, you need to meet individuals, When you're making a new friend, or hiring a new colleague, it's the individual that counts.

And the same is true of our dogs.

I called my book Dog is Love, why and how your dog loves you.

Because I think that the capacity, to form strong emotional bonds, with members of other species especially our species, is the essential clue to why and how, dogs are so successful in human society.

If there's one thing that we dogs have in common, it's this need for strong emotional connections.

That is the essence, all the deep philosophers say, "that the essence of a happy human life, "is strong emotional connections to other human beings."

And so, I think if we learn more about how and why this happens in dogs, that would also have spin off benefits for understanding ourselves.

- The pandemic has all of us wearing these face masks, And that's a good idea, from the point of view of public health.

But these things can present some problems, in terms of interpersonal communication.

So, since it's just me and the camera right now, I'm going to go ahead and peel this thing off.

With the mask on, it's harder for you to see and hear my social cues, things like, the tone of my voice, or the expressions in my face.

For people with autism, it's almost like you're dealing with a world that is all wearing masks, You miss out on those social cues, and it can make communication, with other people much, much harder.

(soft upbeat music) - I'm interested in football game, basketball, hockey, baseball, rally race games.

I also like to go to sporting events.

- [Filmer] Meet Ethan, he's a young boy with autism spectrum disorder, before some recent, very dramatic improvements in his life, Something as simple as going, to a ball game would have been a very bad idea.

- When we would go places, large crowds would overwhelm him.

Lots of noise would overwhelm him.

- I remember one time when I was very little, I went downtown to see the circus, after only five minutes of being there, I said, and hold onto mom's shirt, "mama, I want to go home."

This is the puppet XT Carabiner which is-- - [Filmer] He and his mother are always looking, for new ways to improve his symptoms, and his day-to-day life - I'm no different than any of these other moms, that are out there looking for an answer.

And I just happen to be one of those moms, that you can't tell me there is no answer, because I will find an answer.

- [Filmer] This is David, He also has autism, He's older than Ethan has more responsibilities, and other ways of coping with his symptoms, like caring for his service dog, Hunter.

He's just like his owner, he's a bit rough around the edges, but he gets it but he's a sweetheart.

When it comes down to it.

- [Filmer] Just like any person, no two people with autism are alike, and their symptoms are oftentimes a reflection of that.

- He wouldn't immediately respond to a question, it was like, because he was somewhere else, in his head and then if he did respond, it was usually very abrupt, and he would want to end the conversation quickly and move on, because he couldn't sustain a conversation.

- He would talk very slowly, he had language before the study, but his language was pretty much requesting things.

Not a lot of who, what, where, when, why questions?

- Every single social situation he would come in, he would say hello to everybody, be introduced and then he would excuse himself and go walking, and he would be gone the entire time.

And I would call him when it was time to go and he would come back.

And then the walking, because of his anxiety, he was walking at least 20 miles a day.

- [Filmer] David and Ethan are different ages with different challenges.

But one thing they both shared, from a young age was extreme, Gastrointestinal disorders.

Stomach problems are an issue for many people with autism.

- He had had chronic and severe diarrhea and constipation since he was about 15 months old.

So he didn't know any different.

- What happens if I drank normal milk, my mom thinks it would change my mood entirely.

I start getting stomach cramps and headaches.

- That I knew was not normal, I knew he was in pain.

He couldn't say this hurts, but it was very obvious, it hurt - Oh, a lot of stuff, everything, almost every food that exists in this universe.

- [Filmer] Well, the number of kids struggling with ASD seems to be on a steady increase.

So do methods of treatment for autism symptoms.

- We evaluated gut symptoms of children with autism, and their autism symptoms.

And we found that the kids who had more gut symptoms more chronic constipation, more chronic diarrhea, also had worse autism symptoms across the board.

They had worse language, they had worse behavioral problems, worse social interactions.

And so, is just really stunning to us, to see such a strong correlation, for all of those areas.

- Many children with autism also have, a lot of gastrointestinal issues.

And when you can modulate those gastrointestinal issues their behavior gets better.

- [Filmer] Dr.James Adams and Dr.Rosa Krajmalnik Brown, are two dedicated researchers, at Arizona state university.

Together They have developed a treatment for ASD symptoms that may seem a little taboo.

- Microbiota transplant or transferred therapy, is a way by which we introduce microbes, mainly bacteria from healthy people, into people that for some reason, their gut is not so healthy, and needs more beneficial bacteria.

Gut microbes are all the bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea, that live during testings.

They produce vitamins for us, and they also produce chemicals that we think interacts with other parts of our body, Some of them perhaps with the brain.

So that affects our daily life.

- So when we did a study with Rosa, we discovered that we're able to measure, levels of many hundreds of bacteria and found the kids with autism, were missing many many of their beneficial bacteria.

- And so looking at these data, gave us the idea that adding good microbes of course, could possibly help these children.

So we designed a trial.

- We did a special treatment study, of 18 children with autism - [Filmer] the treatment derived from human fecal matter.

- We don't really use fecal matter, we use the bacteria that are present in fecal matter.

These microbes come from humans that are very healthy.

- So rather than just using raw human stool, just kind of yucky, then instead purify it.

So they removed all the waste matter, and make it just 99% plus just bacteria.

So, a good analogy we'd like to give, it's like having a garden filled with weeds.

If you pluck out all the weeds, like giving the antibiotic, what's going to happen.

Those bad bacteria, those weeds are just going to come right back.

So our thinking is let's pluck out all the weeds and then replant with beneficial bacteria.

- In the case of the therapy that we provided, it was not just the microbes.

The kids actually had two weeks of vancomycin treatment, which is an antibiotic to clear the gut.

- From a bowel cleanse, like you'd have for a colonoscopy to just clear out, their GI tracts remove as much of the food, and gut bacteria possible.

And then we replanted with high doses, of microbiota from healthy donors, very carefully screened, and then gave them daily doses, for eight weeks - We introduced beneficial microbes, and we were able to see that, as we hypothesized their diversity increased.

And the abundance of some specific beneficial microbes, like bifidobacteria also increased, their GI got better, their diarrhea got resolved, their constipation got better.

Their tummy aches got better, and their behavior got better.

- There was a change in his behavior, from the biome being wiped out.

He used to walk up to 20 miles a day.

But since the biome transplant, one of the things that's happened, is he walks a lot less, because he's not as anxious.

- It was just startling, how fast things went, It was like something about, like my brain got rewired and I got like, someone installed a new processor or something.

- He just woke me up with this big, "good morning mom."

and just happy and bubbly and bright, and I sat up and just like, my eyes are filled with tears right now.

(gasps) I hadn't never saw that kid before, he was a new person.

- They flooded most of the bacteria, and it made me like feel better.

And mom thought it was a miracle.

- At the six month Mark, I was really impressed with the changes.

But from the six month Mark to the one-year Mark, the changes were just mind blowing.

- He asks to go to these, sporting events now and he wants to go meet his favorite sports figures, and wait in line and wrestle through the crowds, to try to get an autograph, which is amazing to me because, the crowd doesn't bother him.

The noise doesn't bother him.

The other people don't bother him.

And it's, like a completely different child, than it was before.

- His speech patterns are much more fluid.

And his thoughts seem to come naturally now, whereas it was just very uncomfortable and he would sort of give up, and not want to continue a conversation because he just couldn't get those words out, get those thoughts out.

- Game four has been postponed yesterday-- - Ethan used to play on his iPad.

He would talk to talking Tom, and it would repeat back his voice, and he would play with that.

He came up to me that day, and brought me his iPad.

He played the video of himself talking, before the study and he said, "mom, why did I talk like that?

"What was wrong with me?"

- My before the study, was like slur, And then, now it has evolved.

Now, it actually felt like to me, that I took a step further into human evolution.

- That level of awareness was completely different.

And he, knew he had changed.

- Before the study I was, as far as emotional expression, I was practically a drone or robot, here I am, actually happy.

I can be sad, sometimes angry, other times, but it's actually, I liked that.

I liked that I feel human, I'm not just some empty shell.

- Last Christmas Eve, we went and he said hello to everybody, and he went over and he sat down, on the sofa and stayed.

And, I asked him and he said, I'm just enjoying the tree, and I'm just enjoying being here with everybody.

And so, I said, it was my Christmas miracle.

It really was.

- [Dana] My reasoning behind putting him, in this study was just to fix that GI problem.

That was it.

All the other things, that came along with it were just, really great big blessings, and icing on the cake.

- Overall, it was about an 80% reduction, in gut symptoms, and we were pleased to see that slowly, It took a little while but slowly the children's autism symptoms began to improve during the study.

So by the end of treatment it was about a 25% improvement in autism symptoms.

There is no medication today, that treats the core symptoms of autism, the language, the behavioral challenges, the social interactions.

Our treatment seems to benefit, all of those core symptoms.

We're very hopeful that this will, be a effective treatment but we have a lot more research to do to find out.

- We are also very interested, in understanding how it's working, because we don't know.

We just know that it works and it's very exciting but we want to understand better how it works, and why it works.

- But it's also important to remember, this is the first time, we've ever treated people with autism.

So, we were guessing about the dosage.

We're guessing about their duration.

Let's kind of like if someone had a headache, do I give them a quarter of an aspirin?

How much do I give?

How long do I give it for?

So this is just our first guess, about dosing duration and we did very well.

So, it's possible in our future studies we may do even better.

- See my hope ,is that we can identify important microbes and I don't think it's one, it's probably going to be a team of microbes that are important for this and that we can actually grow them in the lab.

It's better if it's an approach that we can produce at mass scale, and in a very systematic and control way.

- [Filmer] While the research keeps moving forward, Parents in the study groups like Dana and Suzanne are thankful for the growth, and improvements their children have experienced.

And that includes David entering the workforce.

- I'm working at Fry's food, as a courtesy clerk, bringing into carts, packing groceries, like when I'm bagging groceries, I'll talk to people, I'll ask them their name, introduce myself occasionally throw in a little small talk.

And my skills as social skills, are improving dramatically as a result.

And I'm doing pretty well at it.

I mean, it was rough at first, but now it's gotten easier.

- I feel like I want David, to be prepared to be independent.

And so there's a lot that's involved with that, but I think that he's far more capable at this point of being able to do that than he was before, he was definitely branching out.

I believed that he was able now, to go to work and that would expand his social skills, and probably better facilitate his improvement.

- People with autism are employable.

They may have challenges.

They may need accommodations, just like I, need accommodations.

If I don't have my glasses, I won't be able to work.

Some people with autism may need a little extra break time, or some other accommodation, but at the same time, they can be great workers given the right job that fits them.

- The Science and medicine, continue to work on looking for treatments for autism, there is no pill for the rest of society to take to create acceptance for autistic people, to take them on easily as friends, as neighbors, as teammates, and as coworkers.

That only comes with patience and time and hard work.

Get ready to meet a man, Who's bringing all of that to the problem, call him, Chef W. - Just want the dice is just like that.

- Yeah.

- Beautiful.

Huh?

Oh yeah.

Daniel, it looks great.

You don't like labels, You got Atypical.

And neuro-typical.

Personally I even got tattooed on my arm.

Nobody's typical, as my motto.

We opened this restaurant to employ adults, with special needs.

That's why, we opened this restaurant.

That is our mission.

Most people don't come in here for that, they have no idea, 70% of our staff has a developmental disability and they're shocked.

They experienced it firsthand, what these guys may be capable of.

That's what I think is the most special thing about this restaurant.

- [Filmer] This is not your typical deli.

That's the name, It is a restaurant, but many nights each month, it's also a classroom and a training ground, for people with developmental needs , who want to get to work in the food service industry.

- If you walked into my classroom what you would see is a bunch of people wanting to better themselves.

They're working as hard as they can, together to try to take the next step in their lives.

Start with these guys first, and then we'll rotate.

There's a lot of skills, they can learn how to do basic cooking, falling recipes, working as a group, as a team, kitchen safety, huge.

They learn how to problem solve on their own.

That's another huge thing, a lot of these guys have or have a lot of stuff done for them their whole lives.

But when they walk into my classroom, they're on their own.

- [Filmer] Chef W serves up a 12 week program that trains students to face tough challenges, things like conflict, social interactions with customers, and coworkers, Things they will face every day in the workplace or everyday life.