MANY MINDEDA father, a nasal spray, and Montana’s access experiment
MIT Technology Review published a report on 31 July 2026 on Montana's expanded right-to-try law, told through Kris DeVault, whose three-year-old son Brody has creatine transporter deficiency — a rare condition in which the brain and muscles cannot get the creatine they need to develop. Brody was born in March 2023 and began missing milestones in speech, movement and coordination; a genetic test identified the cause when he was around two and a half. There is no cure.
The treatment his father is pursuing is being developed by Ceres Brain Therapeutics, a French biotechnology company. It is designed to deliver creatine directly to the brain, bypassing the faulty transporter, and is administered as a nasal spray. According to Ceres chief executive Thomas Joudinaud, the company has seen promising results in mice and has completed a phase I trial testing several doses in 48 healthy adult volunteers. That trial has not been published. The drug has not been tested in patients with the condition, and doctors cannot prescribe it.
Right-to-try bears on abundance in an uncomfortable way. Access to treatment is one of the needs this site tracks, and for a family with no approved option and a closing developmental window, waiting is itself a cost. But approval takes time because it establishes whether a drug works and whether it harms — and a law that shortens the path does not shorten the underlying uncertainty. It transfers it to the patient.
The caveats are the story's own. The law's effect is described as easing access at least in theory; no patient is reported receiving this drug under it, and the only human data is an unpublished dose-ranging study in healthy adults.
Source: MIT Tech Review