Identifying new therapeutics for Huntington's disease

Abstract Huntington's disease (HD) devastates patients and their families. Although there are treatments that alleviate some of the symptoms, nothing can be done to slow the progression of disease to its inevitable conclusion. The advent of transgenic mouse models for HD, and other polyglutamine disorders, has provided investigators with unprecedented opportunities to test hypotheses and search for new therapeutic approaches. Here we review some of the aspects of the mouse models and some of the promising new therapeutics that have been tested in these animals.