Laura,
I share your feelings, you express your thoughts and emotions so well. Yes, I am very hopeful of this approach. I cannot tell you how happy and excited I am about this for both personal and professional reasons, though it may take another 5 years before we can get any benefit from it. here are the reasons for my excitement.
Yes, I do believe that inflammation being the target is one of the best ways to slow down PD. I dont see any hype about stating that. Like I said earlier, its the combination of stem cell/pd is where I am most interested in.

On the professional front, these vaccine stories...... well, here is the story:

I was diagnosed with PD in 2004 and just like you, I read everything that is under the sun about PD and felt that science can find a way to hlep me. Based on my readings, in 2005 (yes its 2005 april, I just checked my records), I had proposed T cell mediated inflammation being responsible for the failure of stem cell transplants in monkeys with PD and applied for grants to pursue that line of research.
My peers, fellow scientists/clinicians whoever reviewed two of my grants felt it was too far fetched. speculative and biased towards immunology...... and therefore didnt fund those grants. It was five years ago.....cannot help but think what if I had those two grants funded, would the vaccine be in phase i or 2 by now???

I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to see a potential cure right in font of my eyes and not being able to get funding for research and obstacles to new ideas even among the scientists. So my approach now is to send for research proposals on topics I think will yield some sort of therapy in my life time, and just spread my ideas even if they are "too speculative and work needs to be done to show the feasibility"

I wish I had funds to test some other ideas I have rather than wait for another 5 years for others to come up with those same ideas!: Laura, my next pitch for money is for targeted drug delivery to brain.... We have a novel biomolecule that can help in crossing the BBB. once again looking for money!! I am an eternal optimist, never give up, keep trying to get funded for my crazy ideas. Some day, some one will....

wow, wrote a lot, I guess I got carried away.........

Girija..



QUOTE=Conductor71;638657]Thanks, Girija. I am so extremely hopeful over this potential new approach; this is the only theory I have heard in a long while that actually seems to make sense.

I have had such a bad week with my medications and just feeling so lowsy. It's frustrating in that they work well, but the delivery system is so grossly inadequate.

I'm not sure why more of us are not excited over this? This really is a watershed for us as patients. It has been over 40 years since the introduction of our "gold standard" levodopa. If I am not mistaken, this is the first time ever, researchers have come so close to treating the pathogenesis involved, not merely masking symptoms or simply making them more tolerable.

From an Affiris press release (Austrian pharma):
[I]
't know, but I just started crying when I read that maybe it's because I largely felt crappy this week and reading this just gave me the boost I needed and restored my hope.

Laura[/QUOTE]