Application Of Genetic Engeniering To Help Cure Parkinson'S Disease
How can genetic engeniering help cure Parkinson's disease? The Parkinson's disease ended many lives, plenty of people have suffered from this disease. The Parkinson disease is a genetically inherited disease, Parkinson's disease is a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement. Symptoms start gradually, sometimes starting with a barely noticeable tremor in just one hand. Tremors are common, but the disorder also commonly causes stiffness or slowing of movement, in the early stages of this disease your face might swell up, your arms won't swing while you walk and your speech will become slurred or very sluggish, the symptoms worsen as the disease progresses( Rosso, 2009). this disease started appearing about 500000 years ago, but in the recent year's scientist have made a lot of progress, there is no actual cure but they have found a way to treat the symptoms.
Symptoms of the Parkinson's disease can differ for each person, the early stage symptoms may even go unnoticed for some cases. the first symptom is, pill rolling, this is a tremor that is usually found in the hands, your hands start to curl and you may rub your thumb and forefinger back-and-forth this usually happens while the infected person is asleep, which is why it usually goes unnoticed. the second symptom is, slower movement, you may start to have shorter or find tasks more time consuming and require more time, and you could also notice that you are dragging your feet across the floor more often, you will find it hard to get out of the couch or out of the chair. The third symptom is, rigid mucles, you will experience cramps, your muscles will not function at full power, in addition to that this can occur in any part of the body, this is also known as muscle stifniss.
The infected person will also experience something called the loss of automatic movements, it is basically when your body can't perform the unconscious movements that you usually perform, such as, blinking, and swinging your arms while you walk, or even smiling. another symptom that the infected person may experience is you will have impaired posture and balance, meaning that you may find it difficult to remain balanced when you walk, and your posture will be affected as a result of the Parkinson's disease. The Parkinson's disease will also cause speech changes, meaning you will find your self-speaking in a different way, you could speak faster or you could slur in your speech, or you could talk slower, this symptom means that the Parkinson's disease is reaching dangerous levels. The final symptom is, the infected person will struggle to write, if you notice that your handwriting is getting smaller than you may be infected with the Parkinson's disease(Miller 2012). On the contrary, scientists have found a way to cure the symptoms.
The use of gene therapy to treat PD necessitates the use of a suitable method of delivery for the synthesized nucleic acid—viral or nonviral. The choice of vector greatly influences the technique used for delivery, as a peripherally administered vector must be able to cross the blood-brain barrier with an acceptable degree of tissue specificity. Alternatively, the surgical techniques used for deep brain stimulation can be harnessed to deliver the vector directly to a specific brain region. Nonviral techniques are technically and conceptually more straightforward but are less well suited to treating a chronic neurodegenerative disorder such as Parkinson Disease, due to the short duration of gene expression that is typically achieved. Low transfection rates mean that experiments using nonviral vectors have often used multiple dose regimens.
This poses particular problems for translation to human studies if repeated intracerebral injections, with their associated risks, are needed to achieve a meaningful clinical response. This approach may still prove effective, as seen in a recent study using the human glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) gene and a neurotensin polyplex nanoparticle vector in an animal model of PD, finding that a single intracerebral injection of the agent may prove sufficient to induce a biochemical and functional response. Other nonviral vector studies in animal models of PD have incorporated region-specific ligands in order to maximize tissue specificity using intravenous vector administration. For example, one group has used Trojan horse liposomes and a monoclonal antibody to the transferrin receptor to facilitate transport across the blood-brain barrier of a peripherally administered therapeutic plasmid containing DNA for GDNF.
They also incorporated the gene promoter for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH), a key enzyme in the synthesis of dopamine, to restrict expression of the transgene to catecholaminergic neurons. Viral vectors, derived from either DNA or RNA viral vectors, are generally considered to be a more practical approach, with the potential to cause long-lasting gene expression via episome formation or DNA integration into the host genome. A range of different types of viruses, each with different properties and advantages, have been exploited in the search for a suitable vector for gene therapy in PD. These are detailed below, with particular attention to adeno-associated viruses which comprise by far the largest category of vectors used in clinical trials to date.
