Girija,

My post on the AAV is a hot mess. My apologies. I partially included some of my notes which had lots of assumption built in and mixed up research groups. I need to start proofing evrything. There is so much misinformation out there on PD already, and I just added to it. Ugh.

Anyway, the connections are not as clear as I wishfully made them out to be in my notes though there are some very close ties. It turns out that Ceregene has its own patent on the AAV being used and they are working with Genzyme. Genzyme in turn holds license to the convection AAV patent holder at UCSF (Krys Bankeweicz), but are studying delivery of an enzyme AADC that helps produce dopamine. To further muddy the waters Ceregene's founders and owners comprise two scientists from UCal SanFran. Andy Grove funds research at both UCSF and MJFF with a strong interest in neurotrophics. In two articles, it appeared that all of researchers I just mentioned answered directly to Andy Grove, so it seems this is not forté.

As for the convection AAV; my assumption was that NIH must be licensing as I could only find UCSF as being sole patent holder on the convection enhancement, but these were my notes. I intended to have a qualifier in the post. Now it is too late to edit.

So sorry about this; I am embarrassed. Though in researching this anew to be sure I got it right this time, I ran across the following updates see the last entry on GDNF...is the NIH study their Phase I?

http://neurosurgery.ucsf.edu/bankiewicz/parkinsons.html

Laura