Surgical Delivery of Therapeutics

One roadblock to treating the pathology of PD is the inability of promising large molecule therapeutics to cross the blood-brain barrier. A number of techniques are being developed to apply therapeutics directly to the affected areas of the brain, including direct brain infusion via inserted catheters, and experimental non-surgical methods of manipulating blood-brain barrier processes.

In gene therapy, genes that code for therapeutic proteins are delivered to the affected regions of the brain using a viral vector, which is directly infused via a surgically implanted catheter. The therapeutic protein is then produced by the subject's own cells after they are transfected wtih the vector.

Direct brain infusion can also be used to deliver therapeutic molecules directly into the brain. These therapies can utilize diffusion to deliver molecules injected at different locations within the brain or convection enhanced delivery to optimize the spread of molecules from a point source.