Kim IK, Park JH, Kim B, Hwang KC, Song BW. Recent advances in stem cell therapy for neurodegenerative disease: Three dimensional tracing and its emerging use. World J Stem Cells 2021; 13(9): 1215-1230 [PMID: 34630859 DOI: 10.4252/wjsc.v13.i9.1215]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Byeong-Wook Song, PhD, Assistant Professor, Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, Catholic Kwandong University International St. Mary’s Hospital, 25, Simgok-Ro 100 Beon-Gil, Seo-Gu, Incheon Metropolitan City 22711, South Korea. songbw@cku.ac.kr
Research Domain of This Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
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/
World J Stem Cells. Sep 26, 2021; 13(9): 1215-1230 Published online Sep 26, 2021. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v13.i9.1215
Recent advances in stem cell therapy for neurodegenerative disease: Three dimensional tracing and its emerging use
Il-Kwon Kim, Jun-Hee Park, Bomi Kim, Ki-Chul Hwang, Byeong-Wook Song
Il-Kwon Kim, Jun-Hee Park, Bomi Kim, Ki-Chul Hwang, Byeong-Wook Song, Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, Catholic Kwandong University International St. Mary’s Hospital, Incheon Metropolitan City 22711, South Korea
Il-Kwon Kim, Ki-Chul Hwang, Byeong-Wook Song, Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, College of Medicine, Catholic Kwandong University, Gangwon-do 25601, South Korea
Author contributions: Kim IK and Park JH contributed equally to this work; Kim IK, Park JH, Kim B, Hwang KC, and Song BW wrote the manuscript; Song BW conceptualized the idea and reviewed and edited the article.
Supported bythe National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT), No. NRF-2020R1C1C1013535.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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/
Corresponding author: Byeong-Wook Song, PhD, Assistant Professor, Institute for Bio-Medical Convergence, Catholic Kwandong University International St. Mary’s Hospital, 25, Simgok-Ro 100 Beon-Gil, Seo-Gu, Incheon Metropolitan City 22711, South Korea. songbw@cku.ac.kr
Received: February 27, 2021 Peer-review started: February 27, 2021 First decision: May 5, 2021 Revised: May 20, 2021 Accepted: August 30, 2021 Article in press: August 30, 2021 Published online: September 26, 2021
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.
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.
