Does anyone know what ever happened to the research trials to deliver GDNF via the nose?

find out who was an investigator in a trial and contact that person, worked for me when i want the best info i can get on research that may have never been published or i have to pay to read an article.

That research was being done by Dr. Barbara Waszczak, at Northeastern (and funded by MJFF). I believe she is still working on it with some of her grad students. I know she presented a paper on intranasal GDNF at a research seminar in Boston last year. They were having some difficulties because even though her method allowed for the GDNF to cross the BBB, they had to give repeated doses because the GDNF was breaking down quickly in the body. I think the presentation was on a new method where she was using brain cells to incorporate the GDNF into the actual genetic material and then delivered to the brain via a nanoparticle delivery system, which allowed for much more GDNF to pass the BBB. The research was all rodent studies. One interesting side note, which we have discussed previously on this board, was her belief that GDNF would only work in very early stage PD. She hypothesized that by the time major symptoms were present, GDNF would have little benefit, if any.

Thanks much for the info. I know GDNF is too big to cross the BBB but was thinking the nasal route would be possible. The results shown by the Amgen GDNF study which was terminated prematurely appeared to show amazing improvement even for long time PD patients. Of course the GDNF was put directly into the brain. There is GDNF study going now in the UK with 36 patients I believe,

can anyone explain why this style of delivery has not been utilized and researched more for other nutrients such as bitamin B12, glutathione, tumeric, etc etc etc?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24583850

Lipsomal Glutathione is available

http://www.readisorb.com/readisorb_l...utathione.html

Civitas is in PhaseIIb research now for CVT-301, an inhaled form of levodopa. Early results have been very good. It will be interesting to see if more drugs get tested in nasal formulations.