Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Jan 26, 2015; 7(1): 126-136
Published online Jan 26, 2015. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v7.i1.126
Adult human neural stem cell therapeutics: Current developmental status and prospect
Hyun Nam, Kee-Hang Lee, Do-Hyun Nam, Kyeung Min Joo
Hyun Nam, Kee-Hang Lee, Do-Hyun Nam, Department of Neurosurgery, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul 135-710, South Korea
Kee-Hang Lee, Do-Hyun Nam, Kyeung Min Joo, Samsung Advanced Institute for Health Sciences and Technology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul 135-710, South Korea
Kyeung Min Joo, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul 135-710, South Korea
Author contributions: Nam H and Lee KH wrote the paper; Nam DH and Joo KM reviewed the final manuscript.
Supported by The Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in 2014, No. 10172KFDA993
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kyeung Min Joo, MD, PhD, Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, 50 Irwon-Dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul 135-710, South Korea. kmjoo@skku.edu
Telephone: +82-2-21489779 Fax: +82-2-21489829
Received: July 28, 2014
Peer-review started: July 29, 2014
First decision: August 14, 2014
Revised: September 22, 2014
Accepted: October 14, 2014
Article in press: December 16, 2014
Published online: January 26, 2015
Processing time: 169 Days and 20.1 Hours
Abstract

Over the past two decades, regenerative therapies using stem cell technologies have been developed for various neurological diseases. Although stem cell therapy is an attractive option to reverse neural tissue damage and to recover neurological deficits, it is still under development so as not to show significant treatment effects in clinical settings. In this review, we discuss the scientific and clinical basics of adult neural stem cells (aNSCs), and their current developmental status as cell therapeutics for neurological disease. Compared with other types of stem cells, aNSCs have clinical advantages, such as limited proliferation, inborn differentiation potential into functional neural cells, and no ethical issues. In spite of the merits of aNSCs, difficulties in the isolation from the normal brain, and in the in vitro expansion, have blocked preclinical and clinical study using aNSCs. However, several groups have recently developed novel techniques to isolate and expand aNSCs from normal adult brains, and showed successful applications of aNSCs to neurological diseases. With new technologies for aNSCs and their clinical strengths, previous hurdles in stem cell therapies for neurological diseases could be overcome, to realize clinically efficacious regenerative stem cell therapeutics.

Keywords: Adult neural stem cell; Neurological diseases; Stem cell therapy; Preclinical trial; Clinical trial

Core tip: In this review, we compare advantages and disadvantages of various types of stem cells for regenerative therapy in neurological disease, and discuss the preclinical and clinical developmental hurdles of stem cell technologies. While at present, adult neural stem cells (aNSCs) have clinical advantages, technical issues in the isolation and expansion of aNSCs prevent active preclinical and clinical applications of aNSCs. However, several papers have recently reported scientific breakthroughs, on the basis of which broad application trials using aNSCs could be performed. In this review, we also summarize the current status of preclinical and clinical applications of aNSCs for various neurological diseases.