Hematopoietic Gene Therapies for Metabolic and Neurologic Diseases

Increasingly, patients affected by metabolic diseases affecting the central nervous system and neuroinflammatory disorders receive hematopoietic cell transplantation in an attempt to slow the course of their disease, delay or attenuate symptoms, and improve pathologic findings. The possible replacement of brain-resident myeloid cells by the transplanted cell progeny contributes to clinical benefit. Genetic engineering of the cells to be transplanted (hematopoietic stem cells) may endow the brain myeloid progeny of these cells with enhanced or novel functions, contributing to therapeutic effects.