Towards a transgenic model of Huntington’s disease in a non-human primate

Huntington's disease is a severely disabling and lethal neurodegenerative disorder. The development of a non-human primate model for the disease would be invaluable in understanding its pathology and in developing therapeutic strategies, and this paper reports a significant step towards that goal is reported in this issue. Transgenic rhesus macaque monkeys that express the first exon of the polyglutamine-expanded human huntingtin gene develop key features of Huntington's disease, including dystonia and chorea. The data suggest that it will be feasible to generate non-human primate models for Huntington's disease and possibly for other neurodegenerative disorders, where rodent models may not reflect the brain changes and behavioural features of the human disease.