Pioneering a new era in Parkinson's disease management through adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cell therapy

Parkinson's disease (PD) is one of the fastest-growing neurodegenerative disorders worldwide. So far, PD treatments only offer little clinical relief and cannot reverse or stop the disease progression. Stem cell (SC) therapy is a rapidly evolving technology that holds significant promise for enhancing current therapeutic approaches. Adiposederived mesenchymal SCs (AD-MSCs) have many features such as easy harvest with minimal invasive techniques, high plasticity, non-immunogenicity, and no ethical issues, which have made them suitable choices for clinical applications in regenerative research. AD-MSCs are ideal tools to treat PD, as they have the potential to differentiate into functional dopaminergic neurons, and also could produce and secrete useful paracrine factors and extracellular vesicles, such as cytokines and growth factors, and thus promote the repair and regeneration of damaged nerve tissue. Studies revealed that AD-MSCs induced angiogenesis, nerve regeneration, and memory and motor improvement in cellular and animal models of PD. Moreover, clinical studies demonstrated the safety of AD-MSC transplantation in PD patients. This review provides a comprehensive and current summary of the therapeutic potential of AD-MSC transplantation for the treatment of PD, by highlighting the ability of cells to differentiate into functional dopaminergic neurons.