Interventional MRI-guided Putaminal Delivery of AAV2-GDNF for a Planned Clinical Trial in Parkinson's Disease

Clinical trials involving direct infusion of neurotrophic therapies for Parkinson's disease (PD) have suffered from poor coverage of the putamen. The planned use of a novel interventional-magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) targeting system for achieving precise, real-time convection-enhanced delivery in a planned clinical trial of adeno-associated virus serotype 2 (AAV2)-glial-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in PD patients was modeled in nonhuman primates (NHP). NHP received bilateral coinfusions of gadoteridol (Gd)/AAV2-GDNF into two sites in each putamen, and three NHP received larger infusion volumes in the thalamus. The average targeting error for cannula tip placement in the putamen was