Lentiviral gene delivery of GDNF into the striatum of R6/2 Huntington mice fails to attenuate behavioral and neuropathological changes

Transgenic R6/2 mice, which express exon 1 of the human mutant Huntington disease gene, develop behavioral and neuropathological changes that bear some resemblance to the human disease. Several studies have shown that elevated glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) levels can exert neuroprotective effects in animal models of Huntington disease that are based on intrastriatal injections of excitotoxins. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine whether intrastriatal delivery of the GDNF gene by lentivirus (LV-GDNF) could provide structural and functional protection in R6/2 transgenic mice. Four- to 5-week-old mice were left untreated or alternatively received intrastriatal injections of either LV-GDNF or the same viral vector encoding green fluorescent protein (GFP) (LV-GFP) as a control. During the 4-week follow-up period, there was the expected deterioration in performance of the R6/2 mice in paw clasping, rotarod, and open field tests, and the LV-GDNF treated mice showed no improvement over controls. ELISA showed that the LV-GDNF-injected animals had a significant increase in GDNF level in the striatum, and immunohistochemical analysis revealed that GDNF was also overexpressed in brain regions receiving striatal projections. However, GDNF overexpression had no effect on the neuropathological changes examined. Thus, there were no significant differences in the number of EM-48-positive intraneuronal huntingtin inclusions, number of BrdU-positive cells and size of striatal neuronal cross-sectional area. These results suggest that intrastriatal lentiviral vector transfer of GDNF, performed at 5 weeks of age, does not ameliorate neurological and behavioral impairments in the R6/2 transgenic mice model of HD. Further studies are, however, needed to investigate if GDNF given at earlier time points is beneficial.