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BackgroundThe early clinical trials using fetal ventral mesencephalic (VM) allografts in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients have shown efficacy (albeit not in all cases) and have paved the way for further development of cell replacement therapy strategies in PD. The preclinical work that led to these clinical trials used allografts of fetal VM tissue placed into 6-OHDA lesioned rats, while the patients received similar allografts under cover of immunosuppression in an α-synuclein disease state. Thus developing models that more faithfully replicate the clinical scenario would be a useful tool for the translation of such cell-based therapies to the clinic.ResultsHere, we show that while providing functional recovery, transplantation of fetal dopamine neurons into the AAV-α-synuclein rat model of PD resulted in smaller-sized grafts as compared to similar grafts placed into the 6-OHDA-lesioned striatum. Additionally, we found that cyclosporin treatment was able to promote the survival of the transplanted cells in this allografted state and surprisingly also provided therapeutic benefit in sham-operated animals. We demonstrated that delayed cyclosporin treatment afforded neurorestoration in three complementary models of PD including the Thy1-α-synuclein transgenic mouse, a novel AAV-α-synuclein mouse model, and the MPTP mouse model. We then explored the mechanisms for this benefit of cyclosporin and found it was mediated by both cell-autonomous mechanisms and non-cell autonomous mechanisms.ConclusionThis study provides compelling evidence in favor for the use of immunosuppression in all grafted PD patients receiving cell replacement therapy, regardless of the immunological mismatch between donor and host cells, and also suggests that cyclosporine treatment itself may act as a disease-modifying therapy in all PD patients.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40478-015-0263-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Changes within executive function are at the root of most cognitive problems associated with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Because dopaminergic treatment does not necessarily alleviate deficits in executive function, it has been hypothesized that dysfunction of other neurotransmitters/systems besides dopamine (DA), maybe associated with this decrease in cognitive function. We have reported decreases in motor-function and dopaminergic/glutamatergic biomarkers using a progressive 1-methyl-4-phenyl-1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine (MPTP) Parkinson’s mouse model. Assessment of executive function and dopaminergic/glutamatergic biomarkers within the limbic circuit has previously not been explored in our model. Our results show progressive behavioral decline in cued response task (a rodent model for frontal cortex cognitive function) with increasing weekly doses of MPTP. Although within the dorsolateral (DL) striatum mice administered MPTP showed a 63% and 83% loss of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and dopamine transporter (DAT) expression, respectively, there were no changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) or medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Furthermore, dopamine-1 receptor (DA-D1) and vesicular glutamate transporter-1 (VGLUT-1) expression increased in the mPFC following DA loss. There was a significant MPTP-induced decrease/increase in VGLUT-1 and vesicular glutamate transporter-2 (VGLUT-2) expression, respectively, within the DL striatum. We propose that the behavioral decline following MPTP treatment may be associated with a change in not only cortical-cortical (VGLUT-1) glutamate function, but also in striatal DA and glutamate (VGLUT-1/VGLUT-2) input.

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