Biotherapies for Parkinson disease

The clinical use of biotherapies in Parkinson disease already has 30 years' history. The transplantation of dopamine fetal cells in the striatum of advanced patients has proved to be relevant in some patients but randomized efficacy trials in the US have provided disappointing results. However, cell therapies might come back on stage with the use of stem cells in the future. Gene therapy is a more recent strategy relying on viral vectors able to transduce genes coding either for the enzymes that can increase neurotransmitters production or genes for trophic factors. Several approaches have been developed in PD and have been experimented in patients. Although, some of the studies have evidenced insufficient clinical benefit, other programs, such as those using dopamine replacement techniques are promising. We find fresh hope in this field that might be the future of PD treatment. It remains however that advanced PD might not be the ideal condition to properly benefit from biotherapies and there is a need of studies at earlier stages of the disease, a time where major change in the disease course might be expected.