Finding the striatum in sheep: use of a multi-modal guided approach for convection enhanced delivery

Our goal is delivery of a long-term treatment for Huntington's disease. We administer intracerebrally in sheep adeno-associated virus (AAV) to establish optimal safety, spread and neuronal uptake of AAV based therapeutics. Sheep have large gyrencephalic brains and offer the opportunity to study a transgenic Huntington's disease model. However, lack of a relevant brain stereotactic atlas and the difficulty of skull fixation make conventional stereotaxy unreliable. We describe a multi-modal image-guidance technique to achieve accurate placement of therapeutics into the sheep striatum.