Neural stem cell therapy for neurodegenerative disorders: The role of neurotrophic support

Abstract

Neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease currently affect tens of millions of people worldwide. Unfortunately, as the world’s population ages, the incidence of many of these diseases will continue to rise and is expected to more than double by 2050. Despite significant research and a growing understanding of disease pathogenesis, only a handful of therapies are currently available and all of them provide only transient benefits. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop novel disease-modifying therapies to prevent the development or slow the progression of these debilitating disorders. A growing number of pre-clinical studies have suggested that transplantation of neural stem cells (NSCs) could offer a promising new therapeutic approach for neurodegeneration. While much of the initial excitement about this strategy focused on the use of NSCs to replace degenerating neurons, more recent studies have implicated NSC-mediated changes in neurotrophins as a major mechanism of therapeutic efficacy. In this mini-review we will discuss recent work that examines the ability of NSCs to provide trophic support to disease-effected neuronal populations and synapses in models of neurodegeneration. We will then also discuss some of key challenges that remain before NSC-based therapies for neurodegenerative diseases can be translated toward potential clinical testing.

Nigrostriatal interaction in the aging brain: new therapeutic target for Parkinson’s disease

“…As mentioned above, GDNF has regenerative properties for brain cells showing potential in the treatment of PD (Lapchak et al 1996, 1997, Cohen et al 2003, Kirik et al 2004, Eserian 2013, Marsh and Blurton-Jones 2017. GDNF was discovered while searching for a neurotrophic factor for substantia nigra dopamine neurons (Lin et al 1993).…”

Differentiation of Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Wharton’s Jelly Towards Neural Stem Cells Using a Feasible and Repeatable Protocol

“…The pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases is still not fully elucidated and traditional therapy can only slow disease progression. The current available pharmacological and neurosurgical therapies provide only transient benefits and do not arrest the progression of the neuropathological changes [1,3]. Therefore, to recover and restore lost cells and Table 1.…”

Leptin reduces pathology and increases adult neurogenesis in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

“…al., 2010;Buchman et al, 2016). Changes of BDNF level and mRNA expression have been also reported in brain samples as well as blood of AD patients, which also indicates a potential role of BDNF in the pathogenic process of AD (Peng et al, 2009;Angelucci et al, 2010;Laske et al, 2011;Voineskos et al, 2011;Huan et al, 2012;Francis et al, 2012;Nagata et al, 2013;Ventriglia et al, 2013;Prakash and Kumar, 2014;Song et al, 2015;Li et al, 2017;Marsh and Blurton-Jones, 2017).…”