Reprogrammed human skin cells. [Whitehead Institute]
Scientists have successfully manipulated human skin cells and transformed them into brain neurons that may someday be able to treat Parkinson’s disease.
The new technique holds promise of replacing brain cells that are lost in Parkinson’s disease with no risk of immune rejection, according to scientists at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge.
They reprogrammed and differentiated skin cells into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state, Whitehead scientists reported Thursday in the journal Cell.
Then, they used these so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to create dopamine-producing neurons, the cell type that degenerates in Parkinson’s disease patients.
“We have done it much more efficiently, in human cells, and made reprogrammed, gene-free cells,” said lead scientist Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch, adding that other labs have reprogrammed mouse cells but failed to get it to work in human cells.
Other labs have reprogrammed mouse cells and removed the reprogramming genes, but it was incredibly inefficient, and they couldn’t get it to work in human cells”
The study made use the work done by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, who first demonstrated iPS cell generation by replacing four genes known as Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc in adult human dermal fibroblasts using a viral vector.
Whitehead scientists used viruses to transfer the four reprogramming genes, since viruses are adept at delivering active genes into cells.
Despite the promising results, Jaenisch said more work need to be done to perfect the process. “The next step is to use these iPS-derived cells as disease models, and that's a high bar, a real challenge. I think a lot of work has to go into that,” he said.
Parkinson's Disease Patient-Derived Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Free of Viral Reprogramming Factors
Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors
Comments
Your picture is innacurate - no blastocysts (which are embryos) were used. That graphic should begin with a skin cell.
Thank you for the comment. The graphic is there NOT to directly supplement the story but just to show the process. The caption also does not say it is a skin cell but a general "adult stem cell." I have images from the Whitehead Institute but due to copyright issues, I cannot use them. That's why I simply used the image from the NIH.
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