Washington D.C., [USA] — On March 16th, researchers announced they have developed a technique to transform a skin cell directly into a neuron without going through the stage of generating induced pluripotent stem cells. These newly created neurons might potentially be utilized for treating spinal cord injuries or conditions like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
Transforming a skin cell into a neuron—or converting one cell type to another—can be achieved by first inducing the skin cell to become a "pluripotent" stem cell, followed by differentiating this intermediate stage into a neuron.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have now devised a simplified process that bypasses the stem cell stage, converting a skin cell directly into a neuron.
Working with mouse cells, the researchers developed a highly efficient conversion method that can produce more than 10 neurons from a single skin cell. If replicated in human cells, this approach could generate large quantities of motor neurons, which could potentially be used to treat patients with spinal cord injuries or diseases that impair mobility.
"We were able to get to yields where we could ask questions about whether these cells can be viable candidates for the cell replacement therapies, which we hope they could be. That's where these types of reprogramming technologies can take us," said Katie Galloway, the WM Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Chemical Engineering.
As a first step toward developing these cells as a therapy, the researchers showed that they could generate motor neurons and engraft them into the brains of mice, where they integrated with host tissue.
Galloway is the senior author of two papers describing the new method, which appears today in Cell Systems. MIT graduate student Nathan Wang is the lead author of both papers.
The MIT team also hopes to increase the efficiency of this process for human cell conversion, which could allow for the generation of large quantities of neurons that could be used to treat spinal cord injuries or diseases that affect motor control, such as ALS.
Clinical trials utilizing neurons obtained from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to address ALS are currently in progress; however, increasing the quantity of these cells could simplify testing and development for broader human application, according to Galloway.
The study received funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. (ANI)
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