title: Derivation of functional dopamine neurons from embryonic stem cells.
abstract: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the selective degeneration of dopaminergic (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra of the midbrain. Pharmacological treatment of PD has been a prevailing strategy. However, it has some limitations because its effectiveness gradually decreases and side effects develop. As an alternative, cell transplantation therapy has been tried. Although transplantation of fetal ventral mesencephalic cells looks promising for the treatment of PD in some cases, ethical and technical problems in obtaining large numbers of human fetal brain tissues also lead to difficulty in its clinical application. Our recent studies showed that a high yield of DA neurons could be derived from embryonic stem (ES) cells and they efficiently induced behavioral recovery in a PD animal model. Here we summarize methods for generation of functional DA neurons from ES cells for application to PD models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physiology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Dae-Sung
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Ji Young
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Minkyung
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Myung Soo
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Dong-Wook
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D002454:Cell Differentiation; D017690:Cell Transplantation; D018920:Coculture Techniques; D004298:Dopamine / Q000378:metabolism*; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D006801:Humans; D009474:Neurons / Q000166:cytology* / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000637:transplantation
chemical_list: D004298:Dopamine