A study published in Nature shows that symptoms in monkey model of PD by grafting dopamine-producing neurons derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) into the monkeys’ brains.

    Kyoto University neurosurgeon Jun Takahashi and colleagues generated eight IPSC lines from skin or blood cells collected from seven human subjects—three with PD and four without—and derived dopaminergic progenitors from these cell lines. Then, the researchers grafted the reprogrammed cells into the brains of 2- to 3-year-old-male cynomolgus monkeys that had been treated with the neurotoxin MPTP, which kills dopamine-releasing neurons and result in PD-like movement defects.

     The seven monkeys shows a 40% to 50% improvement in symptoms compared to vehicle-injected controls, such as decreases in tremors and increases in spontaneous movements . The authors confirmed that cells derived from both PD patients and healthy donors made dopamine in vivo, at levels about half that of cells in normal monkeys.

     Next steps may be the researches about safety and efficiency of the cells which will be work in the model. Then we get closer ever in the cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD).