Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Neurodegenerative movement disorders such as Parkinson´s disease or Huntington´s disease share the same progressive and relentless course with increasing motor disability coupled with neuropsyquiatric impairment and have been, over these last few decades, a passionate topic of experimental and clinical research due to their lack of therapeutic options. Restorative therapies have brought both enthusiasm with the prospect of its potential to restore brain damage and also disbelief for the less than compelling results from clinical trials. The aim of this review is to discuss the cell replacement therapies applied to both Parkinson´s and Huntington´s diseases since their beginning, following their natural sequence from animal studies into the early human trials, addressing fetal neural tissue transplantation and other more recent prominent cell sources. Nowadays, stem cells became at the forefront of cell therapy. Embryonic, neural and induced pluripotent stem cells were successfully able to generate a desired neuron phenotype and/or provide growth factors to the vulnerable or degenerating host cells allowing researchers to enter a new pre-clinical era. There are still many barriers to overcome before clinical application is possible, it must be assured that the stem cell source has an optimal differentiation potential with full integration and functional enhancement, bears measurable clinical benefits with minimum impact on hosts immune system and absence of tumor formation. The future prospects for stem cell therapy are overwhelming but steady and solid basic and pre-clinical progresses must be held before clinical application becomes eligible.
Author: A.C. Ribeiro
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2734827181