Transplantation of cholinergic neural stem cells in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

It is believed that the degeneration of cholinergic cells in the nucleus basalis of Meynert (NBM) and the loss of cortical cholinergic innervation cause dementia of Alzheimer's disease (AD).(1) Currently available therapeutic interventions are mainly aimed at alleviating the cholinergic deficits. Unfortunately, these strategies do not prevent the disease, but instead offer limited symptomatic improvement.(2) A recent study demonstrated that transplantation of in vitro expanded neural stem cells (NSCs) in an animal model of Parkinson's disease (PD) resulted in functional recovery of the animals to some extent,(2) suggesting that such neural precursors might offer a useful future therapy for AD. In this study, we tried to find whether mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell derived cholinergic NSCs grafted in the prefrontal and parietal cortex have effects on the disruption of spatial memory following development of lesion in NBM.