lurking,
pharma has done 6? clinical trials thru phase 2 involving cell or gene implants,5 have failed.
neurologix, titan's spheramine retinal cells, gdnf, are 3 i can remember.
off the top of my head, i can think of 2 clinical trials still going on, ceregene and oxford bioscience?.
everyone remember that autologous stem cell implant, the researcher was at CEDAR SINAI in L.A., canadian dr., implanted on 1 side of dennis turner, great results, took the research private and it went nowhere, i heard turner deteriorated over time.

i think MJFF probably is funding non-drug research.

if there wasn't money to be made in non_drug treaments, why would DBS have been developed?

just playing devil's advocate.

i was in a phase 3 trial - it was awhile ago, for sumanirole, a dopamine agonist. the trial was cancelled but the interesting thing that where i live there was a population of over a million within easy distance of the trial site and only 3 patients volunteered!! the trial went to open label, the first part compared placebo vs requip vs sumanirole, so i knew i was on the drug and and i was allowed to up my dosage to an effective dose. since my symptoms were very mild i can't say it had a terrific affect but the neuro told me one patient with advance pd was tremendously helped. as someone who can't tolerate even .25mg mirapex, i could tolerate sumanirole. anyway, 6 months into the trial it was cancelled, pfizer bought pharmacia and they cancelled it.

getting to the point, i see a major part of the problem is getting enough volunteers and the treatment has to be better than DBS. if drug companies/govts decided tomorrow to invest billions in pd research, would they be able to enlist enough volunteers? enough neurosurgeons?
i think it took neurologix almost 2 years to find i think 50-60 volunteers over multiple sites for their phase2 trial and it failed, i think they recently filed for bankruptcy.

sad to think that even within this imperfect system, 10 more patients might have produced a statistically significant improvement. it would be sad if their research just died with the company.

i know big pharma is working on alzheimers but likely much easier to find volunteers since fatal.

not arguing, just commenting.