London, February 01: We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells.
Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have directly converted mouse skin cells into the main components of brain tissue.
By using the new method, scientists manage to skip the middle stem cell stage in which they have to turn obtained embryonic stem cells and turn them into different cell types such as precursor of nerve cells.
The new technique involvs converting skin cells directly into neural precursor cells which are then transformed to neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, the three main components of the brain tissue, scientists wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The newly derived neural precursor cells offer another advantage over neurons because they can be cultivated to large numbers in the laboratory, a feature critical for their long-term usefulness in transplantation or drug screening, authors added.
“We are thrilled about the prospects for potential medical use of these cells,” said senior researcher Marius Wernig. “We’ve shown the cells can integrate into a mouse brain and produce a missing protein important for the conduction of electrical signal by the neurons. “
“More work needs to be done to generate similar cells from human skin cells and assess their safety and efficacy,” Wernig added.
——Agencies