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Andreas Heuer

Andreas Heuer

Research team manager

Andreas Heuer

Single cell transcriptomics identifies stem cell-derived graft composition in a model of Parkinson’s disease

Author

  • Katarína Tiklová
  • Sara Nolbrant
  • Alessandro Fiorenzano
  • Åsa K. Björklund
  • Yogita Sharma
  • Andreas Heuer
  • Linda Gillberg
  • Deirdre B. Hoban
  • Tiago Cardoso
  • Andrew F. Adler
  • Marcella Birtele
  • Hilda Lundén-Miguel
  • Nikolaos Volakakis
  • Agnete Kirkeby
  • Thomas Perlmann
  • Malin Parmar
Show all

Summary, in English

Cell replacement is a long-standing and realistic goal for the treatment of Parkinsonʼs disease (PD). Cells for transplantation can be obtained from fetal brain tissue or from stem cells. However, after transplantation, dopamine (DA) neurons are seen to be a minor component of grafts, and it has remained difficult to determine the identity of other cell types. Here, we report analysis by single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) combined with comprehensive histological analyses to characterize intracerebral grafts from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and fetal tissue after functional maturation in a pre-clinical rat PD model. We show that neurons and astrocytes are major components in both fetal and stem cell-derived grafts. Additionally, we identify a cell type closely resembling a class of recently identified perivascular-like cells in stem cell-derived grafts. Thus, this study uncovers previously unknown cellular diversity in a clinically relevant cell replacement PD model.

Department/s

  • StemTherapy: National Initiative on Stem Cells for Regenerative Therapy
  • Developmental and Regenerative Neurobiology
  • MultiPark: Multidisciplinary research focused on Parkinson´s disease
  • Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory
  • Human Neural Developmental Biology

Publishing year

2020

Language

English

Publication/Series

Nature Communications

Volume

11

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Topic

  • Neurosciences

Status

Published

Research group

  • Developmental and Regenerative Neurobiology
  • Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory
  • Human Neural Developmental Biology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2041-1723