From left: Associate Professor Darren Svirskis, Professor Bronwen Connor and Dr Amy McCaughey-Chapman
Professor Bronwen Connor, Dr Amy McCaughey-Chapman (Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology) and Associate Professor Darren Svirskis (School of Pharmacy) were awarded a Marsden Fund Project grant in the latest funding round for their project entitled “Reprogrammed dopamine cells in three-dimensional microspheres to treat Parkinson’s Disease”.
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a debilitating neurodegenerative disease caused by the loss of dopamine neurons in the brain. Cell replacement therapy can achieve significant improvements in treating patients with PD by replacing dead dopamine neurons with healthy cells. However, this therapy is not able to progress for a lack of suitable dopamine neurons to transplant, as well as poor transplant survival and insufficient connection of the transplanted cells with the host brain. To address these issues, this project will use novel cell reprogramming technology which allows the direct generation of human dopamine neural precursor cells (hiDAPs) from adult human skin cells, providing a well suited and abundant source of donor cells for replacement therapy.
Using state-of-the-art bioengineering and cell reprogramming technology this project will, for the first time, encapsulate hiDAPs in 3-dimensional microspheres laden with the growth factor GDNF to enhance the survival and generation of functional dopamine neurons. Cell-laden microspheres will be injected into the host brain and functional integration of dopamine neurons with host tissue will be evaluated in both ex vivo and in vivo settings. The novel and clinically relevant outcomes of this project will advance the use of cell replacement therapy to treat PD.