Down Syndrome and Cell Therapy: A Review

Abstract

Cell therapy has been considered as an alternative treatment for many diseases, including Down syndrome (DS). However, this treatment remained debatable due to insufficient clinical data. Therefore, this study aims to identify and evaluate studies on the potential of cell therapy in improving the quality of life of DS patients. Relevant English articles and snowball sampling from Science Direct and PubMed (published until August 2019) on the effects of cell therapy on DS was retrieved. Only original articles on the effect of cell therapy in DS patients or Ts65Dn (trisomic) mice were selected. Two independent reviewers reviewed the articles with selective inclusion criteria using a standard data extraction form. Cell therapy showed no significant findings on the physical appearance, cognitive function, social, and behavior skills of DS patients. Interestingly, implantation of murine neural stem cell (mNSC) or murine neural progenitor cell (mNPC) showed better cell survival and response towards brain injury, decrease tau + granules and increase granules density in the dentate gyrus in the trisomic mice. mNSC/mNPC in mice brain was found to be able to migrate to the sites of the injury following chemokine signals and eventually provide neuroprotection and promote axonal growth. To conclude, mNSC/mNPC implantation could be considered as an alternative treatment for DS or DS with early onset of Alzheimer Disease (AD).