CytoTherapeutics preclinical data

CTII published animal data in a model of Huntington's disease, in which certain behavioral deficits but not others were corrected by CNTF implants. Some neuronal types were spared damage, the research showed.

As reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, implants of polymer-encapsulated baby hampster kidney fibroblasts, expressing the human gene for CNTF, were placed in one of the lateral ventricles of the rat brains. To model Huntington's, injections of the neurotoxin quinolinic acid were given to that same side of brain, targeted to the striatum. This area, important for coordination of movement, is damaged in Huntington's. The neurotoxin typically damages GABA and cholinergic neurons, a loss that can be measured in rats behaviorally by continuous circling after a drug is given, if the lesion is made on only one side of the brain. ...