Cell secretome based approaches in Parkinson's disease regenerative medicine

The available therapeutic strategies for Parkinson's disease (PD) rely only on the amelioration of the symptomatology of the disease, lacking neuroprotection or neuroregeneration capacities. Therefore, the development of disease modifying strategies is extremely important for the management of PD in the long term. Areas covered: In this review, the authors provide an overview of the current therapeutic approaches for PD and the emerging use of stem cell transplantation as an alternative. Particularly, the use of the secretome from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), as well as some methodologies used for the modulation of their paracrine signaling, will be discussed. Indeed, there is a growing body of literature highlighting the use of paracrine factors and vesicles secreted from different cell populations, for this purpose. Expert opinion: Secretome from MSCs has shown its potential as a therapy for PD. Nevertheless, in the coming years, research should focus in several key aspects to enable the translation of this strategy from the bench to the bedside.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT): Ciência 2007 Program and IF Development Grant [IF/00111/2013] to AJ Salgado, PhD scholarships attributed to C.R. Marques [PD/BDE/127833/2016], A. Marote [PDE/BDE/113598/2015] and B. Mendes-Pinheiro [SFRH/BD/120124/2016] and Post-Doctoral Fellowship to F.G. Teixeira [SFRH/BPD/118408/2016]. This article has been developed under the scope of the project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000023, supported by the Northern Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER). This work has been funded by FEDER funds, through the Competitiveness Factors Operational Programme (COMPETE), and by National funds, through FCT, under the scope of the project [POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007038]