AAVRh.10 Administered to Children With Late Infantile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis

The investigators propose to assess the safety and efficacy of a new administration method to deliver a biologic to children with a form of Batten disease using an experimental gene transfer procedure. This gene transfer procedure consists of delivering a good copy of the mutated gene to the nerve cells via a virus. These children are born with genetic changes called mutations that result in the inability of the brain to properly recycle proteins. The recycling failure leads to death of the nerve cells in the brain and progressive loss of brain function. Children with Batten disease are normal at birth but by age 2 to 4 have motor and vision problems which progress rapidly to death at age approximately 10 years old. There are no therapies available to treat the disease. The investigators previous clinical trial used a virus called adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) as the gene delivery system. That study showed that viral delivery of the gene was safe and showed small, but significant benefits to the recipient. The investigators currently have an IRB approved protocol which uses a slightly different virus called AAVrh.10 as the gene delivery system. This 3rd protocol proposes to use the same virus AAVrh.10 as the gene delivery system and has expanded the eligibility criteria.

This study is designed to run parallel to our currently IRB approved protocol #0810010013 entitled "Direct CNS Administration of a Replication Deficient Adeno-associated Virus Gene Transfer Vector Serotype rh.10 Expressing the Human CLN2 cDNA to Children with Late Infantile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis," which will assess the safety and efficacy of the virus AAVrh.10 to deliver the CLN2 gene to children in the early stages of the disease. This current study proposes to assess the safety and efficacy of the administration of the same biologic to children who do not fit the criteria for IRB protocol #0810010013. The differences between protocol #0810010013 and the proposed "parallel" protocol is that inclusion criteria have been modified to include children with any genotype (not only the 5 most common genotypes as in the currently approved protocol) and/or those who score below a 6 but at least a 1 on the Weill Cornell LINCL scale. The reason for expanding the eligibility criteria is to obtain a range of safety data for all children with LINCL, not only those with limited genotype and/or severity. Only 8 subjects will be administered the gene transfer vector in this "parallel" protocol. Subjects will be accrued through IRB approved protocol #0901010186 entitled, "Genotype-Phenotype Correlations of Late Infantile Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis (2)." Those who do not fit all criteria for the already approved gene transfer protocol (#0810010013) may have the opportunity to be enrolled in this proposed "parallel protocol" (Figure 1). The subjects in the new protocol will be compared to the 16 treated and 16 untreated children enrolled in IRB protocol #0810010013 and #0901010186, respectively.