Current treatments for Parkinson’s disease (PD) alleviate symptoms, but lead to involuntary muscle spasms and do not prevent the loss of neurons that underlie the disease. Transplanting stem cells from fetal tissue has shown enough promise to warrant clinical trials, but the approach is ethically complex and the outcomes are inconsistent, likely because of differences between donor tissues.
In a recent study published in Nature Medicine, researchers reported that transplanting personalized induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into the brains of rhesus monkeys modeling PD not only improved motor function and neuron growth over a two-year period, but also boosted the animals’ moods.1
The findings indicate clinical potential for using stem cells derived from the patient, known as autologous stem cell therapy, to treat PD. This study is the culmination of University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Su-Chun Zhang’s career-long goal to repair damaged or lost function in the brain.
“This work confirms ...
