title: Cell therapy: the final frontier for treatment of neurological diseases.
abstract: Neurodegenerative diseases are devastating because they cause increasing loss of cognitive and physical functions and affect an estimated 1 billion individuals worldwide. Unfortunately, no drugs are currently available to halt their progression, except a few that are largely inadequate. This mandates the search of new treatments for these progressively degenerative diseases. Neural stem cells (NSCs) have been successfully isolated, propagated, and characterized from the adult brains of mammals, including humans. The confirmation that neurogenesis occurs in the adult brain via NSCs opens up fresh avenues for treating neurological problems. The proof-of-concept studies demonstrating the neural differentiation capacity of stem cells both in vitro and in vivo have raised widespread enthusiasm toward cell-based interventions. It is anticipated that cell-based neurogenic drugs may reverse or compensate for deficits associated with neurological diseases. The increasing interest of the private sector in using human stem cells in therapeutics is evidenced by launching of several collaborative clinical research activities between Pharma giants and research institutions or small start-up companies. In this review, we discuss the major developments that have taken place in this field to position stem cells as a prospective candidate drug for the treatment of neurological disorders.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Sciences, International Medical University, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Susmita
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dutta
authors.forename: Gurbind
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Singh
authors.forename: Sailaja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sreejith
authors.forename: Murali Krishna
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Mamidi
authors.forename: Juani Mazmin
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Husin
authors.forename: Indrani
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Datta
authors.forename: Rajarshi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pal
authors.forename: Anjan Kumar
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Das
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000502:physiology; D017690:Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D009422:Nervous System Diseases / Q000601:surgery*; D058953:Neural Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology; D039904:Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology