Neurotransplantation in neurodegenerative disease: a survey of relevant issues in developmental neurobiology.
Neural development and transplantation therapies in neurodegenerative disease share a particular feature. In both cases, undifferentiated neural precursor cells are required to differentiate into a range of neural cell types in a tissue-specific fashion. This similarity opens the possibility that the mechanisms that drive neural development play a similar role in CNS repair. In this chapter, two aspects of neural development are considered in terms of their relevance to CNS repair: the diversity of neural precursor cells and positional specification. We present evidence to suggest that neural stem cells have a degree of diversity that is beyond what might have been expected a priori. We also show that neural stem cells express genes that might encode a positional specification for these cells, and consider a number of hypotheses about the role of positional specification in CNS repair.
Price
J
J
Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF, UK.
Uwangho
D
D
Peters
S
S
Galloway
D
D
Mellodew
K
K
D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000166:cytology / Q000196:embryology / Q000601:surgery; D016380:Brain Tissue Transplantation; D009446:Neurobiology; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000601:surgery*; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology* / Q000637:transplantation*; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*