Towards a complete organotypic model of Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, affecting more than 10 million people worldwide. This progressive neurological disorder is characterised by a large number of motor and non-motor features due, in part, to the lack of dopamine released in the striatum as a result of degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the Substantia Nigra Pars Compacta (SNpc).

In order to achieve a better understanding of the disease and to develop new effective therapeutics, an important step is the creation of a complete model of the disease. While a variety of in vivo/in vitro models have been reported none of them are able to phenocopy PD, mainly because they lack some specific neuropathological and/or behavioural feature of the disease. In this sense organotypic brain slices can be a useful tool as they maintain the cytoarchitecture and neuronal connections as in vivo, while conserving some features of in vitro models such as an easy experimental accessibility and good environmental control. Furthermore, they do not require the high technical and financial resources if in vivo studies and more importantly they are able to reduce the number of animal used for scientific purposes.