Abstract
ES/iPS cell technology has created a solution for the problems faced in fetal cell therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD), and especially, autografts can now be realized by using iPS cells. We have shown that human ES cell-derived dopaminergic neurons survived in Parkinson's disease model monkeys without tumors, and we have developed an efficient method for making a large quantity of dopaminergic progenitors using the Laminin-511 E8 fragment and cell sorting. Human iPS cell-derived dopaminergic progenitors survived and functioned in a PD rat model using this method. We have also confirmed that autografts of monkey-iPS cell-derived neurons elicited only a minimal immune response in the brain in contrast to allografts. We are planning a clinical study to observe the safety of PD patient-iPS cell-derived dopaminergic progenitors in autografting.
