2020

Therapeutic potential of stem cells for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases

Hamid Ahmadian-Moghadam 1, Mitra-Sadat Sadat-Shirazi 1, Mohammad-Reza Zarrindast 2 3

Affiliations

  • 1Department of Genetic, Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
  • 2Department of Genetic, Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. zarinmr@ams.ac.ir.
  • 3Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 13145-784, Tehran, Iran. zarinmr@ams.ac.ir.

Abstract

Neurodegenerative diseases are caused by a loss of neurons within the peripheral or central nervous system. Inadequate repairability in the central nervous system and failure of treatments are the significant hurdles for several neurological diseases. The regenerative potential of stem cells drew the attention of researchers to cell-based therapy for treating neurodegenerative diseases. The clinical application of stem cells may help to substitute new cells and overcome the inability of the endogenous repairing system to repair the damaged brain. However, the clinical application induced pluripotent stem cells are restricted due to the risk of tumor formation by residual undifferentiated upon transplantation. In this focused review, we briefly discussed different stem cells currently being studied for therapeutic development. Moreover, we present supporting evidence for the utilization of stem cell therapy for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Also, we described the key issues that should be considered to transplantation of stem cells for different neurodegenerative diseases. In our conclusion, stem cell therapy probably would be the only treatment strategy that offers a cure for neurodegenerative disease. Although, further study is required to identify ideal stem cells candidate, dosing and the ideal method of cell transplantation. We suggest that all grafted cells would be transgenically armed with a molecular kill-switch that could be activated by the event of adverse side effects.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; Brain ischemia; Cell therapy; Demyelinating disorder; Friedreich’s ataxia; Huntington’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; Spinal cord injury; Spinal muscle atrophy; Stem cells.