I was intrigued by this article. Note this excerpt: Neurotrophic factors which could slow down or even halt the progression of the degeneration of dopamine nerves have been in the focus as a possible new treatment for Parkinson's disease. Glial cell- line derived neurotrophic fctor (GDNF) is one example of such a promising growth factor. Indeed, it was shown to have beneficial effects in a clinical trial in Parkinsonian patients suffering from severe symptoms. However, due to adverse effects the clinical trials have been stopped, even though some of the patients would have continued the therapy. Even so, the clinical trials on GDNF gave the proof of concept for the use of neurotrophic factorstreatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Therefore it is very important to search for new growth factors with similar efficacy as GDNF, but with better tolerability.

You may recall all of the downplaying of the benefits of GDNF after the Amgen trials were halted. It behooves me as to why there wasn't a massive outrage from more who wanted a cure for Parkinson's. (see the Parkinson's Pipeline Project http://pdpipeline.org/advocacy/why_amgen_haltsr.htm ) There have been articles disputing the results of the GDNF trials that are convincing enough for me. The bi question is "WHY would a company so close to finding a cure for PD want to halt those trials?"

This CDNF study sounds even more promising. But this is only animal studies. I couldn't find whether the original GDNF studies used as their study population used MPTP- or 6-OHDA-induced Parkinson's. I really think that there may be a differentiation between how well those populations do when exposed to neurotrophic factors. But I'm not a scientist.

I may sound ungrateful for this CDNF study, but quite the contrary. I am just disappointed that someone didn't fight more for the GDNF trials, which could have possibly been available to the patient by now. So my charge to the readers is DON'T LET THIS TRIAL REPEAT THE OUTCOME OF THE GDNF (AMGEN) TRIALS.

Peg