Developing Stem Cell Therapies for Parkinson's Disease: Waiting Until the Time Is Right

摘要

The ability to successfully replace lost nigral dopaminergic neurons in Parkinson's disease (PD) has been clearly shown with fetal ventral mesencephalic transplants, albeit inconsistently. The need to trial this approach with stem-cell-derived neurons is approaching, but it should only commence when all the key issues have been adequately resolved. Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder that affects about 1 in 800 people worldwide and is currently incurable. It is characterized by a movement disorder associated with the loss of the nigral dopaminergic neurons, and while it is now well described that the pathology and clinical features extend outside these domains, it can nevertheless be successfully treated for many years with dopaminergic drugs. However, over time these drugs become less effective as the disease progresses and generate their own unique side effects such as dyskine-sias. As such over the last 30 years there have many attempts to better deliver dopa-mine to the parkinsonian brain using cell-based therapies and many lessons have been learned from these studies.