Viral vectors in the treatment of Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is an obvious target for the development of gene therapy procedures which could involve both the delivery of the gene encoding tyrosine hydroxylase to boost dopamine production or the delivery of genes encoding neurotrophic factors such as GDNF to promote the survival of dopaminergic neurons. A variety of different viral and nonviral methods for achieving such gene delivery are described together with the particular advantages of herpes simplex virus-based vectors which have the potential to deliver multiple therapeutic genes in a single virus vector.