An experimental gene therapy seems to show potential to slow the debilitating progression of Huntington's disease, a European biotech company that developed the new treatment says.

Huntington's disease is a nerve-destroying disease that runs in families and damages movement, robs memory and alters personality while people are in the prime of their lives. It is almost always lethal within 10 to 20 years of diagnosis, neurologists say.

Now, researchers are excited about the results from one company's small, preliminary clinical study of a treatment that targets the genetic error that causes the disease.

"I have unbridled optimism," Ed Wild, principal investigator at University College London's Huntington's disease centre who was involved in the trial, in an interview with CBC's .

"This i

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