Stem Cell Transplants for Parkinson’s Disease Getting Closer

 Regenerative Medicine  

A major breakthrough in the development of stem cell-derived brain cells has put researchers on a firm path towards the first ever stem cell transplantations in people with Parkinson’s disease. A new study presents the next generation of transplantable dopamine neurons produced from stem cells. These cells carry the same properties as the dopamine neurons found in the human brain.

Stem cells can be used to heal the damage in the brain caused by Parkinson's disease, according to scientists from Lund University.

In their study on rats published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the researchers claim a "huge breakthrough" towards developing effective treatments.

"This study shows that we can now produce fully functioning dopamine neurons from stem cells. These cells have the same ability as the brain’s normal dopamine cells to not only reach but also to connect to their target area over longer distances."

There is no cure for Parkinson's disease, but medication and brain stimulation can alleviate symptoms. The disease is caused by the loss of nerve cells in the brain that produce the chemical dopamine. Dopamine helps to control mood and movement. The disease is insidious and over time you get more and more difficult to walk and move normally. It also suffers from fatigue and a kind of mental inertia. There are drugs that relieve the symptoms but after fifteen to twenty years subsides medicine the good effect. Researchers have been working on developing new treatments.

To simulate Parkinson's, the researchers killed dopamine-producing neurons on one side of the rats' brains. They then converted human embryonic stem cells into neurons that produced dopamine. These were injected into the rats' brains, and the researchers found evidence that the damage was reversed.

"This study shows that we can now produce fully functioning dopamine neurons from stem cells. These cells have the same ability as the brain’s normal dopamine cells to not only reach but also to connect to their target area over longer distances. This has been our goal for some time, and the next step is to produce the same cells under the necessary regulations for human use. Our hope is that they are ready for clinical studies in about three years", says Malin Parmar, who led the study conducted at Lund University and at MIRCen in Paris as part of the EU networks NeuroStemCell and NeuroStemcellRepair.

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There have been no human clinical trials of stem-cell-derived neurons, but the researchers said they could be ready for testing by 2017. Parmar, says, "This is one of the biggest breakthroughs that have occurred in the last 20 years when it comes to producing functional dopamine cells from a renewable source. One can say that it is a form of factory dopamine cells because these stem cells we use have an unlimited ability to divide. So now we can produce as much as we like cells in the laboratory that they can then use on patients."

Using embryonic stem cells may be preferable, as it is easier to get hold of the large numbers of cells needed for transplant by growing them in the laboratory.

Brain cell transplants with fetal dopamine cells obtained from human embryos have already been performed on a few occasions, with varying results. In the past decade, the EU network TRANSEURO has been working hard to get a new and improved trial underway. That moment is now here. In the coming months a small number of patients will be transplanted with fetal cells in Lund, Sweden and Cambridge, United Kingdom.

Getting stem cells to become functioning dopamine neurons, the method of delivering them to a specific target, and learning how to get them to integrate in the brain, are all extremely complicated processes according to the researchers.




SOURCE  Lund University

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