Cell therapy for Parkinson׳s disease: Functional role of the host immune response on survival and differentiation of dopaminergic neuroblasts

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder, whose cardinal pathology is the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra. Current treatments for PD have side effects in the long term and do not halt disease progression or regenerate dopaminergic cell loss. Attempts to compensate neuronal cell loss by transplantation of dopamine-producing cells started more than 30 years ago, leading to several clinical trials. These trials...