By Natalie Healey – Nature Medicine –
Landmark trials using stem cells to treat Parkinson’s disease in the USA and Japan mark a turning point for cell therapy in neurodegeneration. Similar approaches to Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are also showing early signs of promise.
During the height of New York City’s COVID-19 lockdown, a small group of people with Parkinson’s disease arrived at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for an experimental neurosurgical procedure: the implantation of dopamine-producing neurons grown from human embryonic stem cells. Now, the researchers behind the trial have published results from that phase 1 study, showing that the transplanted cells survived, released dopamine and were well tolerated1. Some participants even experienced visible reductions in tremors.
