Human foetal brain tissue as quality control when developing stem cells towards cell replacement therapy for neurological diseases.

Human foetal brain tissue has been used in experimental and clinical trials to develop cell replacement therapy in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. These pioneering clinical studies have shown proof of principle that cell replacement therapy can be effective and is worthwhile to develop as a therapeutic strategy for repairing the damaged brain. However, because of the limited availability of foetal brain material, and difficulties in producing standardized and quality-tested cell preparations from this source, there have been extensive efforts in investigating the potential use of alternative cell sources for generating a large number of transplantable, authentic neural progenitors and neurons. In this review, we highlight the value of using human foetal tissue as a reference material for quality control of acquired cell fate of in vitro generated neurons before and after transplantation.