Abstract: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by loss of the ventral substantia nigra dopaminergic neurons. The cause of this disease is complex and its pathogenesis remains unclear. At present, it is still difficult to cure PD with drug therapy and surgical treatment. Cell therapy may provide a novel strategy for PD. After transplantation of the fetal ventral mesencephalic tissue into striatum of patients with PD, motor function of PD patients was partially restored. Therefore, the cell therapy plays an important role in treating PD. Stem cells, including pluripotent stem cells, neural stem cells and mesenchymal stem cells, provide renewable resources for clinical applications and further broaden the prospects of cell therapy through directional differentiation into dopamine neurons. Induced neurons avoid the high cost of establishing a stem cell bank in vitro and are expect to allow neuronal regeneration in situ. In this review, we discuss the current progress in cell therapy for the treatment of PD, hoping to provide a good candidate for the regenerative medicine for treatment of PD.

Key words: Parkinson disease, stem cells, multipotent stem cells, neurons, cell therapy