Cell Transplantation for Neurological Disorders: Toward Reconstruction of the Human Central Nervous System (Contemporary Neuroscience)

Distinguished medical researchers from around the world review novel neural reconstructive techniques that appear to be beneficial for Parkinson's disease and hold promise for treating Huntington's disease, pain, demyelinating diseases, and stroke. The contributors focus on those diseases for which clinical trials are either ongoing or likely to occur in the near future. Among the topics reviewed are results and rationale for some of the leading transplant programs for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, the use of PET scanning for patient evaluation, autopsy studies of transplant recipients, transplant immunology, fetal tissue transplantation for Huntington's disease, cellular transplantation for the treatment of pain and stroke, and transplantation of myelinating cells. A full discussion of the important ethical issues surrounding the use of fetal tissue for transplantation purposes is also included.