Dear Colleagues,

Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by the chronic and progressive loss of neuronal functions in specific brain areas, resulting in memory deficit, cognitive impairment, or impaired motor coordination. There is a wide range of hereditary and sporadic neurologic disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. All these diseases occur as a result of neurodegeneration and include typical protein misfolding and aggregation. Although intensive efforts have been made to find a cure, effective treatments for neurodegenerative diseases have not yet been discovered. Possible reasons for this include the lack of appropriate human disease models and a limited understanding of the etiological and neurobiological mechanisms of these conditions.  Experimental models that accurately mimic the development of neurodegenerative diseases in humans are desperately needed to understand the cause and mechanisms of these diseases, as well as to identify new therapeutic targets. Recent advances in stem cell technology have opened the path to the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from somatic cells, thus offering an unlimited source of patient-specific disease-relevant cells for more accurate modeling.  In this Special Issue, we aim to summarize the current knowledge in this important field and give researchers the possibility of sharing novel data on the multiple aspects of modeling neurodegeneration by using stem cells in different disease pathologies. We invite experts to contribute with critical reviews and research papers on, but not limited to, the neurodegenerative diseases mentioned above, describing different models and mechanisms that play a role in neurodegeneration and the use of such models in drug discovery.   

Dr. Šárka Lehtonen
Guest Editor
Dr. Amalia Dolga
Co-Guest Editor

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• neurodegenerative diseases
• stem cells
• cell-autonomous and non-cell-autonomous mechanism
• protein misfolding and aggregation
• inflammation
• humanized models
• drug discoveries