Stem cell-based cell therapy for Huntington disease: a review

Abstract

Huntington disease (HD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder and no proven medical therapy is currently available to mitigate its clinical manifestations. Although fetal neural transplantation has been tried in both preclinical and clinical investigations, the efficacy is not satisfactory. With the recent explosive progress of stem cell biology, application of stem cell-based therapy in HD is an exciting prospect. Three kinds of stem cells, embryonic stem cells, bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells and neural stem cells, have previously been utilized in cell therapy in animal models of neurological disorders. However, neural stem cells were preferably used by investigators in experimental HD studies, since they have a clear capacity to become neurons or glial cells after intracerebral or intravenous transplantation, and they induce functional recovery. In this review, we summarize the current state of cell therapy utilizing stem cells in experimental HD animal models, and discuss the future considerations for developing new therapeutic strategies using neural stem cells.