Abstract
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease with the major pathology being the progressive loss of dopaminergic (DA) midbrain neurons in the substantia nigra. As early as in the 1980s, open-label clinical trials employing fetal ventral mesencephalon (fVM) tissues have demonstrated significant efficacy for PD treatment, which led to two NIH-sponsored double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials. However, both trials showed only mild outcome. Retrospective analysis revealed several possible reasons that include patient selection, heterogeneity of grafts, immune recognition of grafts, lack of standardization of transplantation procedure and uneven distribution of grafts. Recent years have seen advances in reprogramming technologies which may provide solutions to the problems associated with fVM tissues. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) hold promise for generating clinical grade DA neural cells that are safe, homogeneous, scalable and standardizable. These new technologies may bring back clinical trials using cell therapy for PD treatment in the future.
Highlights
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in people over 60 years old [1, 2]
In addition to motor symptoms caused by degeneration of DA neurons, many PD patients present with non-motor symptoms, such as cognitive impairment and mood problems [3]
Human fetal ventral mesencephalon tissue transplantation for PD treatment In PD patients, the degenerating neurons are restricted in space and cell type – mainly DA neurons at the substantia nigra are injured; this feature attracts the interest of cell biologists and makes PD a feasible disease for cell transplantation therapy
Summary
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in people over 60 years old [1, 2]. Other emerging treatments that have gone through clinical trials include gene therapies and cell transplantation therapies. Human fetal ventral mesencephalon (fVM) tissue transplantation for PD treatment In PD patients, the degenerating neurons are restricted in space and cell type – mainly DA neurons at the substantia nigra are injured; this feature attracts the interest of cell biologists and makes PD a feasible disease for cell transplantation therapy.
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