Parkinson's Disease and Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Potential for Cell-Based Therapy

Figure 1

Strategy for MSC transplantation in PD patients. MSCs can be obtained from fat tissue or bone marrow aspirates of Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients and are applicable for autocell transplantation. They can also be obtained from fat tissue, bone marrow aspirates, and umbilical cord of healthy donors for allocell transplantation. Naive MSCs can be directly transplanted into the striatum of PD patients, but this treatment exerts temporary trophic effects. Gene-introduced MSCs also have trophic effects for the replenishment of lost cells. MSCs are able to be induced into dopamine neurons that will contribute to the functional recovery of PD>.