Nazaret Gamez Ruiz, George A Edwards III, Enrique Armijo Fuentes, Carlos Kramm-Barria, Rodrigo Morales, Claudio Soto, Ines Moreno-Gonzalez
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Stem cell therapy has been proposed as a novel approach to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD) to rescue dopaminergic cell loss and decrease the neuroinflammatory response. However, the conventional intracerebral therapeutic strategy needs to be replaced by a less invasive methodology. It has been shown that intravenously-delivered cells can penetrate through blood brain barrier. For this reason, we hypothesized that intravenous inoculation of neural precursors (NPs) derived from embryonic and mesenchymal stem cells (ESCs and MSCs) can be used as a novel, risk free therapy for PD by modulating the disease-associated neuroimmune response activation and ameliorating the motor control impairment. In the present study, NPs were derived from ESCs and MSCs and administrated into PD mice model (MPTP injected) by tail vein injection. Mice were behaviorally assessed and brain neuropathology for neuroinflammatory markers evaluated 10 days post-treatment. NPs-treated mice showed an amelioration in motor abilities and a significant decreased in neuroinflammatory markers for astroglia and microglia cells compared to control PBS-injected PD mice. Therefore, peripheral administration of NPs is a promising therapy to treat the neuropathology and clinical symptoms associated to PD.