New Autism Committee Chair Founded a Leucovorin Telehealth Company

John Gaitanis, MD, who was recently appointed the new chair of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC), co-founded a company that provides leucovorin to families of children with autism.

Meadow Biosciences — now called Meadow Health — launched in April and described itself as the “first national telehealth platform dedicated to leucovorin care for children with autism.” It says it provides “clinician-guided care through custom-compounded medications when prescribed, delivered to the patient’s door.”

Gaitanis, who also was named director of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in August, does not appear to be involved in the company’s day-to-day operations. He is not listed on the company’s “About Us” page and doesn’t appear elsewhere on the company website.

John Slattery, Meadow Health’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement that Gaitanis divested his financial interest in Meadow before becoming NICHD director.

As of press time, HHS has not responded to a request to confirm whether Gaitanis divested himself from the company.

Gaitanis previously served as chief of child neurology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston as well as director of child neurology at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. He replaced Sylvia Fogel, MD, a psychiatrist and an instructor at Harvard Medical School who had led the IACC since January. She has an adult son with autism and remains on the committee.

Fogel told MedPage Today that both the IACC and HHS “have a rigorous ethics review process, and I have no concerns about conflicts of interest” regarding Gaitanis.

Art Caplan, PhD, professor emeritus of medical ethics at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, does have concerns. He said there is no real evidence that leucovorin is helpful for patients with autism.

“There are many people who are being appointed [by the Trump administration] who have connections to alternative medicine and fringe remedies in terms of owning companies or promoting products which raise a lot of red flags,” Caplan said in a phone call. “Even if they divested from them to take the appointment, the connection to that company would be disqualifying. … It’s not enough to say ‘I don’t sell it any more;’ you’d say that you can’t serve because you were promoting non-tested products.”

Leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, is a type of folate used with cancer drugs like methotrexate to counteract their toxic effects, and has been surging in popularity as of late. Prescriptions for leucovorin for children with autism rose sharply after widespread media attention early in 2025, and again after a White House briefing last fall promoted unproven claims about the drug, an analysis of national electronic health record data showed.

Last year, the FDA announced that it was starting a process to allow leucovorin to be prescribed for adults and children with cerebral folate deficiency, a rare condition that’s been associated with developmental delays that include autistic features. During a press briefing with President Donald Trump, Marty Makary, MD, MPH, who was FDA commissioner at the time, said the proposed label change was being done “so that it can be available to children with autism.”

When the actual label change was rolled out some 6 months later, it was strongly curtailed, focusing on patients with FOLR1-related cerebral folate transport deficiency (CFD-FLOR1), an ultra-rare hereditary disorder.