Dental pulp stem cells for treating neurodegenerative diseases.

Abstract

The hippocampal formation, important for spatial learning and memory function, exhibits high level of plasticity in response to behavioral changes as well as injury. Dysfunction of the hippocampus is one of the hallmark features of neurodegenerative diseases like temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Dhanushkodi and Shetty 2008). Excitotoxicity is one of the known mechanisms by which neurons undergo degeneration in neurodegenerative condition (Haglid et al., 1994; Doble et al., 1995). Brain regions such as hippocampus are more susceptible to excitotoxic damage. During excitotoxicity, the glutamate receptors are hyper-activated, resulting in an imbalance between inhibitory and excitatory function, disturbances in calcium homeostasis, mitochondrial function and enhanced production of free radicals that eventually cause the nerve cells to degenerate (Zheng et al., 2011). Most of the existing drugs for treating neurodegenerative diseases provide only symptomatic relief and do not affect the progression of the disease. Hence, there is a pressing need to identify alternate therapeutic approaches to treat neurodegenerative diseases.