Dopaminergic (DA) cell replacement therapies are a promising experimental treatment for Parkinson’s disease and a number of different types of DA cell-based therapies have already been trialled in patients. To date the most successful have been allotransplants of foetal ventral midbrain but even then, the results have been inconsistent. This coupled to the ethical and logistical problems with using this tissue has meant that an alternative cell source has been sought of which human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) sources have proven very attractive. Robust protocols for making mesencephalic DA progenitor cells from hPSC now exist and the first in-human clinical trials have or are about to start. However, while their safety and efficacy are well understood, relatively little is known about their immunogenicity and in this review, we briefly summarise this with reference mainly to the limited literature on human foetal dopaminergic cells.
Parkinson's disease candidate gene prioritization based on expression profile of midbrain dopaminergic neurons
