Stem cell therapy for Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by memory loss and cognitive impairment. It is caused by synaptic failure and excessive accumulation of misfolded proteins. To date, almost all advanced clinical trials on specific AD-related pathways have failed mostly due to a large number of neurons lost in the brain of patients with AD. Also, currently available drug candidates intervene too late. Stem cells have improved characteristics of self-renewal, proliferation, differentiation, and recombination with the advent of stem cell technology and the transformation of these cells into different types of central nervous system neurons and glial cells. Stem cell treatment has been successful in AD animal models. Recent preclinical studies on stem cell therapy for AD have proved to be promising. Cell replacement therapies, such as human embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cell–derived neural cells, have the potential to treat patients with AD, and human clinical trials are ongoing in this regard. However, many steps still need to be taken before stem cell therapy becomes a clinically feasible treatment for human AD and related diseases. This paper reviews the pathophysiology of AD and the application prospects of related stem cells based on cell type.

Proteomic Characterization of Human Neural Stem Cells and Their Secretome During in vitro Differentiation

“…NSCs/NPCs are among cell sources considered or already used in clinical trials for cell-based therapies in neurological conditions including neurodegenerative diseases, e.g., Alzheimer's disease (Oliver and Reddy, 2019 ; Hayashi et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2020 ), Parkinson's disease (Díaz, 2019 ; Oliver and Reddy, 2019 ; Harris et al, 2020 ), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Abati et al, 2019 ), spinal cord injuries (Ahuja et al, 2020 ), stroke (Suda et al, 2020 ), or multiple sclerosis (Cuascut and Hutton, 2019 ; Pluchino et al, 2020 ). Currently, 40 studies employing NSCs/NPCs are Active or Completed according to ClinicalTrials.gov .…”

Reduction of Amyloid Burden by Proliferated Homeostatic Microglia in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Alzheimer’s Disease Model Mice

“…However, treatment results have been unsatisfactory [ 17 ]. In recent years, embryonic stem cells, brain-derived neural stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells have been used as cell therapy for AD treatment; however, problems persist, including the requirement for a neurosurgical procedure, immunosuppression, and tumor formation [ 18 ]. As a novel therapeutic strategy for AD, a nano-based drug delivery system was suggested [ 19 ].…”

Recent advances on drug development and emerging therapeutic agents for Alzheimer’s disease

“…Different type of stem cells such as embryonic SC can mitigate ACh levels [ 32 ], induced pluripotent SC can help in regeneration of depleted neural network [ 33 , 34 ] while umbilical cord blood/placenta and mesenchymal SC can reduce Aβ, tau phosphorylation and reverse microglial neuroinflammation [ 35 ]. Several clinical trials (phase1/2) involving autologous adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), human MSC, leukemia MSC, bone marrow MSC and human umbilical cord blood-derived MSC have been conducted in the AD patients to evaluate their safety and efficacy [ 36 , 37 ]. Undoubtedly stem cell therapy has the potential to produce disease-modifying effects in AD and therefore cast a ray of hope in a battle against the devastating AD.…”