Based on positive initial treatments in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease, conducted by David Yurek at University of Kentucky, a second Phase of studies will now work to optimize the nanoparticle payload, a DNA expression system that is capable of expressing candidate therapeutic genes for months, if not years, in the affected brain regions of Parkinson’s disease patients.
Funding for this project has been provided by The Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Mark Cooper, senior vice president of science and medical affairs at Copernicus, said: “We are most encouraged by the positive treatment results of Parkinson’s disease rats treated with DNA nanoparticles containing the GDNF gene.
“Copernicus has developed proprietary expression elements that achieve long term gene expression in various tissues, and sustained expression of GDNF in the rat brain will lead to further investigational new drug-track studies for a Phase I human clinical trial in Parkinson’s disease subjects.”