Stem Cells and Parkinson's Disease

The goal of this paper is to compare the utility of adult, embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to treat Parkinson’s disease. As such several things will be assessed, dosage of stemcells, improvement in motor function, in combination with the presence of α-synuclein proteins and cell survival.

To give a short overview of the steps that will be taken to complete the study. Obtaining stem cells, whether adult, embryonic or induced, shall be done using healthy mouse models and after ethical approval has been gained. The process to derive them will be detailed below, however they are also purchasable commercially with the benefit of being well studied and accompanied by a detailed analysis of properties, however with a higher purchasing costs. All steps should be done using sterile techniques to avoid contamination, both to object and self. All (disposable) materials should be sterilized and (where possible) only for 1 time use, due to the sensitivity stem cells have to detergents. After verifying they are bonafide stem cells the next phase should be ready to commence.

Rats will be used as a disease model. All will be healthy, adult and a baseline PET scan and performance on a rotarod will be done. All but 1 set will then be subjected to a neurotoxin to mimic the diseased Parkinson state. Another PET scan and rotarod test will be done on all groups. The groups affected by the neurotoxin will then be subdivided into those receiving the different types of stem cells, one subgroup will receive no treatment and one group will receive medium (no cells). Next to this 2 different dosages will occur. Another PET scan and rotarod will be done to determine if any improvement occurs. Rats will then be sacrificed to determi...

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...ter a 6-OHDA lesion of the substantia nigra in a single hemisphere and if the injected cells would become infected by α-synuclein proteins.

References:

Bjorklund LM, Sánchez-Pernaute R, Chung S, Andersson T, Chen IY, McNaught KS, Brownell AL, Jenkins BG, Wahlestedt C, Kim KS, et al. Embryonic stem cells develop into functional dopaminergic neurons after transplantation in a Parkinson rat model. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2002;99:2344–2349.

Lerou, P.H. et al. Derivation and maintenance of human embryonic stem cells from poor-quality in vitro fertilization embryos. Nat. Protoc. 3, 923– 933 (2008).

Mead R. 1988. The design of experiments. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. 620 p.

Takahashi, K., Okita, K., Nakagawa, M. & Yamanaka, S. Induction of pluripotent stem cells from fibroblast cultures. Nat. Protoc. 2, 3081–3089 (2007).