Unlocking The Fountain

Bryson’s parents travel to Boston/Cambridge, the global capital for rare disease research. Their goal: to ask private biotech companies to help in their search for a cure. Scientists provide new clues, but also raise difficult questions.

Finding a cure for Bryson no longer seems impossible. And that raises new questions about the ethics of this journey. Bryson’s family seeks out new perspectives and learns why “cure” is a loaded term in the disability rights community.

Scientists in Toronto get to work building a mouse with Bryson’s precise genetic variant. Plus, the family travels to Atlanta to provide blood samples for a researcher to create DNA-based “mini-brains” in his lab. Could this cutting edge science provide clues to unlocking Bryson’s brain?

Bryson’s family travels to meet other GRIN1 patients, including Bryson’s GRIN-twin Olivia. And research on mice offers new hope for finding a cure. But a new illness means that the family now needs two medical miracles.

Bryson’s parents explore CRISPR, a new technology with the potential to cure dozens of diseases once thought incurable. But gene editing comes with risks — not just for individual patients, but for the human race.

From violent seizure-like episodes to insensitive comments from strangers, Bryson has a hard life. But after years of searching, doctors finally provide a diagnosis. The news changes everything for Bryson’s parents and provides a possible path to new treatments — or even a cure.

Bryson seems like a perfectly healthy baby. But soon doctors confirm his parents’ worst fears: something is wrong with Bryson’s brain. Despite dozens of tests over nearly a decade, doctors come up empty in their efforts to find a diagnosis.