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As our world continues to evolve, the field of regenerative medicine follows
suit. Although many modern day therapies focus on synthetic and natural
medicinal treatments for brain repair, many of these treatments and
prescriptions lack adequate results or only have the ability to slow the progression
of neurological disease or injury.
Cell therapy, however, remains the most compelling treatment for
neurodegenerative diseases, disorders, and injuries, including Parkinson’s
disease, Huntington’s disease, traumatic brain injury, and stroke, which is
expanded upon in more detail in Chapter 1 by Snyder and colleagues. Cell
therapy is also unique in that it is the only therapeutic strategy that strives to
replace lost, damaged, or dysfunctional cells with healthy ones. This repair
and replacement may be due to an administration of exogenous cells itself
or the activation of the body’s own endogenous reparative cells by a trophic,
immune, or inflammatory response to cell transplantation. However, the
precise mechanism of how cell therapy works remains elusive and is continuing
to be investigated in terms of molecular and cellular responses, in
particular. Moreover, Chapter 11 by Emerich and associates, discusses some
of the possibilities of cell immunoisolation and the potential for treating
central nervous system diseases.
During the past 20 years most investigations have utilized cells derived
from fetal tissue as a source of transplantable cells for cell therapy, which
have demonstrated an underlying proof of principle for current cell transplants
for a treatment of a variety of neurological diseases and injuries, including
Huntington’s disease which are discussed in Chapter 4 by Dunnett and colleagues.
Chapter 4 also reviews challenges in harvesting the tissue, the analogy
of developmental stages between species, clinical trials, alternative tissue
sources, as well as specific xenogenic issues. In addition, stem cells have
emerged as the leading topic regarding cell therapy. According to the National
Institutes of Health, “a stem cell is a cell that has the ability to divide (self replicate)
for indefinite periods-often throughout the life of the organism. Under the
right conditions, or given the right signals, stem cells can give rise (differentiate)
to the many different cell types that make up the organism. That is, stem
cells have the potential to develop into mature cells that have characteristic
shapes and specialized functions, such as heart cells, skin cells, or nerve
cells.” |
