Stem cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease is likely one of the most promising approaches to not only slow down the disease, but also reverse it.
However, there are many important things to take into account when assessing cell therapies for Parkinson's disease.
Furthermore, be (very) weary of companies offering stem cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease. Nearly all of them use unapproved, untested “therapies”, often with low-quality or non-existing cells, and could actually be dangerous.
Luckily, various companies and universities are currently testing novel (stem) cell therapies for Parkinson’s disease.
However, many of these approaches differ. Below you find some important things to take into account when assessing these therapies.
1. Embryonic stem cells versus pluripotent stem cells
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2. Matched versus non- matched cells
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3. Dopaminergic cells versus precursor cells
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X. Quality of the cells
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3. Are steps taken to improve survival and grafting of the cells?
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4. Amount of cells injected
The number of cells that are injected is important. It’s estimated that at least 100,000 cells need to successfully graft and survive to benefit from a cell treatment.
When cells are injected, most of them die due to stress and grafting problems. Therefore, it’s important to inject sufficient numbers of cells to increase the chance that at least some cells graft.
For example, in one clinical trial, it was found that injecting 2 million cells lead to significantly better outcomes than injecting “only” 900,000 cells (R).
