From Skin to Brain: A Parkinson’s Disease Patient Transplanted with His Own Cells

This week we are joined by Parkinson’s disease expert and neurosurgeon Jeffrey Schweitzer, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He takes us through a recently published case study in the New England Journal of Medicine on a novel autologous transplantation treatment for Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a prevalent and debilitating neurodegenerative disease that primarily affects dopaminergic cells in the brain. It has many existing treatments available, but many lose efficacy over time. This single case study presents evidence that transplantation of a patient's stem cells-derived dopamine neurons into the brain may pave the way forward for treatments that have better longevity and reversal of symptoms than other available treatments on the market.