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Therapeutic Strategies for Parkinson’s Disease: The Ancient Meets the Future—Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine, Electroacupuncture, Gene Therapy and Stem Cells

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Abstract

In China, it has been estimated that there are more than 2.0 million people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which is currently becoming one of the most common chronic neurodegenerative disorders during recent years. For many years, scientists have struggled to find new therapeutic approaches for this disease. Since 1994, our research group led by Drs. Ji-Sheng Han and Xiao-Min Wang of Neuroscience Research Institute, Peking University has developed several prospective treatment strategies for the disease. These studies cover the traditional Chinese medicine—herbal formula or acupuncture, and modern technologies such as gene therapy or stem cell replacement therapy, and have achieved some original results. It hopes that these data may be beneficial for the research development and for the future clinical utility for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2006C B500700), National Natural Science Foundation of China (30430280, 30472245, 30571704 and 30500255) and Natural Science Foundation of Beijing (kz200510025014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physiology, Capital Medical University, Key Laboratory for Neurodegenerative Disorders of the Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100069, People’s Republic of China

    Xuan Wang & Xiao-Min Wang

  2. Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Xi-Bin Liang

  3. Division of Neurology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, 27710, USA

    Feng-Qiao Li

  4. Department of Anesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

    Hui-Fang Zhou

  5. Department of Anesthesiology and Basic Medical Science, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, Kansas City, MO, 64108-2792, USA

    Xian-Yu Liu

  6. Department of Psychiatry, Emory University School of Medicine, 615 Michael Street, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Jian-Jun Wang

  7. Neuroscience Research Institute and Department of Neurobiology, Peking University, Key Laboratory for Neuroscience of the Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Xiao-Min Wang

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  1. Xuan Wang
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Correspondence to Xiao-Min Wang.

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Special issue article in honor of Dr. Ji-Sheng Han.

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Wang, X., Liang, XB., Li, FQ. et al. Therapeutic Strategies for Parkinson’s Disease: The Ancient Meets the Future—Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine, Electroacupuncture, Gene Therapy and Stem Cells. Neurochem Res 33, 1956–1963 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-008-9691-z

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