Recent advances in stem cell therapy for neurodegenerative disease: Three dimensional tracing and its emerging use

Abstract

Neurodegenerative disease is a brain disorder caused by the loss of structure and function of neurons that lowers the quality of human life. Apart from the limited potential for endogenous regeneration, stem cell-based therapies hold considerable promise for maintaining homeostatic tissue regeneration and enhancing plasticity. Despite many studies, there remains insufficient evidence for stem cell tracing and its correlation with endogenous neural cells in brain tissue with three-dimensional structures. Recent advancements in tissue optical clearing techniques have been developed to overcome the existing shortcomings of cross-sectional tissue analysis in thick and complex tissues. This review focuses on recent progress of stem cell treatments to improve neurodegenerative disease, and introduces tissue optical clearing techniques that can implement a three-dimensional image as a proof of concept. This review provides a more comprehensive understanding of stem cell tracing that will play an important role in evaluating therapeutic efficacy and cellular interrelationship for regeneration in neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Cell tracing; Neurodegenerative disease; Stem cells; Three-dimensional imaging; Tissue clearing

Core Tip: Although the use of stem cells in neurodegenerative disease has become widespread, a proof of concept (PoC) for three-dimensional analysis of the interrelationships in brain structure has not been performed in vivo. This review will introduce recent stem cell research for therapies and PoC for a three-dimensional analysis based on tissue optical clearing.