BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Going viral in Parkinson's disease

February 9, 2012 8:00 AM UTC

University of Cambridge researchers have fused a virus-derived peptide that crosses the blood brain barrier with a neuroprotective RNA to generate a conjugate that can be delivered noninvasively to the brain in Parkinson's disease models.1 The group is now elucidating the details of the neuroprotective mechanism and determining the smallest RNA domain needed to elicit the effect.

Multiple groups have previously used viral vectors to deliver therapeutic genes directly into the brain in preclinical models of PD, but John Sinclair, a professor of molecular virology at the University of Cambridge, thinks the safety and efficacy issues make it unlikely that such methods will easily translate into the clinic...