Kulvinder Kochar Kaur, Gautam Allahbadia and Mandeep Singh
Despite the Embryonic stem cells (ESC's) having the potential to provide unlimited cells and tissues for regenerative medicine, their use is difficult because most of them will be rejected by the patient’s immune system unless officially immunomatched. Although pluripotent stem cells are genetically identical to a patient, they can be established by reprogramming of somatic cells. Limitations remain high cost and they are required to produce clinical grade cells for each kind of patient. The ESC's derived from parthenogenetic embryos (pESC) which are homozygous for HLA 'S may serve as an alternative for immunomatched therapies for a large number of patients. Since multiple parthenogenetic embryos can be developed by a single ovarian stimulation protocols large amounts of pESC's can be developed and a bank developed cutting on the cost and since no sperm involved in fertilization ethical concerns regarding use of human embryos for deriving ESC's is obviated. Also this has given insight into patients having failure to fertilize oocyte by combining artificial activation of oocytes arrested in meiosis with strontium chloride along with ICSI. Further Byrne et al. showed how we may be at the threshold of trying to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease with the recent proof given by Blurton Jones that neural stem cells can effectively therapeutically deliver disease modifying proteins like neprilysin throughout the brain areas in rat models of AD with the advantages over large scale window of delivery as compared to viral vectors along with recent advances in human nuclear programming, stem cell research, highly customized genetic engineering may provide a revolutionary approach which could ameliorate/slow down the progression of AD.
