Replacing Dopamine Neurons in Parkinson’s Disease: How did it happen?

The efforts to develop a dopamine cell replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease have spanned over more than three decades. Based on almost 10 years of transplantation studies in animal models, the first patients receiving grafts of fetal-derived dopamine neuroblasts were operated in Lund in 1987. Over the following two decades, a total of 18 patients were transplanted and followed closely by our team with mixed but also very encouraging results. In this article we tell the story of how the preclinical and clinical transplantation program in Lund evolved. We recall the excitement when we obtained the first evidence for survival and function of transplanted neurons in the diseased human brain. We also remember the setbacks that we have experienced during these 30 years and discuss the very interesting developments that are now taking place in this exciting field.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Journal of Parkinson's Disease

• Publication date

  2017-03-06

• Fields of study

  Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3233/JPD-179002PMID 28106570PMCID 5345652
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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