Current advances in combining stem cell and gene therapy for neurodegenerative diseases

Neuronal death is the common final pathologic pathway of various neurodegenerative diseases (NDs). Although central nervous system has little regenerative potential, it is expected that damaged neural tissue can be recovered by exogenous supplementation of stem cells; however, stem cell therapy cannot modulate specific causes of NDs, such as accumulation of extracellular amyloid peptides in Alzheimer’s disease. In contrast, gene therapy can deliver therapeutic genes to specific ND targets. Therefore, combining stem cell and gene therapy would have dual treatment mechanisms (regenerating damaged neural tissue and modifying specific causes of NDs) and lead to better clinical outcomes. In this review, we discuss various therapeutic genes that can be used to develop stem cell gene therapy for various NDs and the techniques for how therapeutic genes can be integrated into stem cells.