A grant from the U.S. Department of Defense is seeking to assist children with Rett syndrome by investigating a trio of drugs approved for other conditions.

This research uses a master protocol that allows the three treatments – ketamine, vorinostat and donepezil – to be examined at once in patients with this rare genetic disorder.

"We're gaining an advantage by sharing placebo information instead of running three trials with the same number of people on each drug," said principal investigator Jeffrey Neul, MD, PhD, of Vanderbilt.