Neural transplants for parkinson's disease:what are the issues?

摘要

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder of the nervous system that affects about 1 in 800 people and for which we have symptomatic but not curative therapies.At the core of the disease is the loss of a specific population of dopaminergic neurons within the brain,and replacement of dopamine through drug therapies has provided clinically significant benefit for many patients.However this therapy only ever offers a temporary amelioration of symptoms and with time this symptomatic therapy becomes less efficacious and produces its own unique side-effects.As a result more effective curative therapies have been sought,including the use of cell based therapies to replace the lost dopaminergic neurons.In this review I am going to discuss PD and its possible repair using neural transplants.In particular I am going to discuss which type of cells are best considered as a reparative therapy,where they should be transplanted in the brain,when in the disease course and in which type of patient.By considering these issues,I hope to be able to make some recommendations as to the future use of this approach in PD.