Researchers directly turn mouse skin cells into neurons
Posted on February 1st, 2010 | by Stem Cell News |
Even Superman needed to retire to a phone booth for a quick change. But now scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes. The cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell — a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities.
The finding could revolutionize the future of human stem cell therapy and recast our understanding of how cells choose and maintain their specialties in the body.
“We actively and directly induced one cell type to become a completely different cell type,” said Marius Wernig, MD, assistant professor of pathology and a member of Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “These are fully functional neurons. They can do all the principal things that neurons in the brain do.” That includes making connections with and signaling to other nerve cells — critical functions if the cells are eventually to be used as therapy for Parkinson’s disease or other disorders.
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