Our goal was to assess the effects of administering a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor (vandetanib) that blocks VEGFR2 and RET receptors in a preclinical model of PD.
Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), a potential therapeutic factor for Parkinson's disease (PD), exerts its biological effects through the Ret receptor tyrosine kinase.
Additionally, we performed an HH interaction analysis with a publicly available dataset of Parkinson's disease and confirmed previous findings that the RET proto-oncogene is associated with the disease.
As the activation of GFRalpha1/RET was shown to rescue dopaminergic neurons, our results suggest the potential of persephin for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.
Glial cell-line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF)-mediated RET tyrosine kinase signaling is implicated in the survival of several PNS and CNS neuronal populations that are important in the pathogenesis of several disorders including Parkinson's disease and drug addiction.
These data suggest that the RET molecules enable selective gene transduction, and that NBL-1 may possibly be applied to gene therapy for neuroblastomas and Parkinson's disease.