Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon.
Faculty of Medicine, American University of Beirut Medical Center, Beirut, Lebanon ; Center for Neuroproteomics and Biomarkers Research, Department of Psychiatry, Gainesville, Division of Addiction Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610, USA.
Neural Regen Res. 2014 May 1;9(9):901-6. doi: 10.4103/1673-5374.133129.
The prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases and neural injury disorders is increasing worldwide. Research is now focusing on improving current neurogenesis techniques including neural stem cell therapy and other biochemical drug-based approaches to ameliorate these disorders. Unfortunately, we are still facing many obstacles that are rendering current neurotherapies ineffective in clinical trials for reasons that are yet to be discovered. That is why we should start by fully understanding the complex mechanisms of neurogenesis and the factors that affect it, or else, all our suggested therapies would fail since they would not be targeting the essence of the neurological disorder but rather the symptoms. One possible paradigm shift is to switch from neuroprotectant therapies towards neurodegeneration/neurorestorative approaches. In addition, other and our laboratories are increasingly focusing on combining the use of pharmacological agents (such as Rho-associated kinase (ROCK) inhibitors or other growth factors (such as brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)) and stem cell treatment to enhance the survivability and/or differentiation capacity of transplanted stem cells in neurotrauma or other neurodegeneration animal models. Ongoing stem cell research is surely on the verge of a breakthrough of multiple effective therapeutic options for neurodegenerative disorders. Once, we fully comprehend the process of neurogenesis and its components, we will fully be capable of manipulating and utilizing it. In this work, we discuss the current knowledge of neuroregenerative therapies and their associated challenges.
神经退行性疾病和神经损伤疾病的患病率在全球范围内不断上升。目前的研究重点是改进现有的神经发生技术,包括神经干细胞疗法和其他基于生化药物的方法,以改善这些疾病。不幸的是,我们仍然面临许多障碍,由于尚未发现的原因,目前的神经疗法在临床试验中无效。这就是为什么我们应该首先充分了解神经发生的复杂机制和影响它的因素,否则,我们所有的建议疗法都将失败,因为它们不会针对神经紊乱的本质,而只是针对症状。一种可能的范式转变是从神经保护疗法转向神经退行性变/神经修复方法。此外,我们和其他实验室越来越关注将药物治疗(如 Rho 相关激酶(ROCK)抑制剂或其他生长因子(如脑源性神经营养因子(BDNF))与干细胞治疗相结合,以提高神经损伤或其他神经退行性动物模型中移植干细胞的存活率和/或分化能力。正在进行的干细胞研究肯定即将为神经退行性疾病带来多种有效的治疗选择。一旦我们充分理解神经发生的过程及其组成部分,我们将完全有能力对其进行操纵和利用。在这项工作中,我们讨论了神经再生疗法的现有知识及其相关挑战。