Neurons from fibroblasts

The skin turns into a culture of brain cells

Sergey Syrov, XX2 century, based on the materials of Lund University: Large-scale production of living brain cells enables entirely new research

In order to defeat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, you need to know more about them. But researchers face a significant obstacle – it is impossible to directly observe the living brain cells of patients with these diseases. Perhaps the best solution would be to use cell cultures. The scientific group of Lund University in Sweden offers a new technology for creating such cultures – by transforming patients' own cells. To do this, you do not need to get into a person's head, aging brain cells are obtained from skin cells.

Just a few years ago, a research group led by Malin Parmar reported on the possibility of converting skin cells into brain cells, bypassing the intermediate stage – the return of the cell to the stem state. Now the following success is reported. The developed technology makes it possible to produce brain cells in quantities that open previously inaccessible opportunities for experiments on cell cultures.

"First of all, we inhibited the REST protein involved in creating cellular identity in cells that are not neural. After limiting the effect of this protein on cells, completely different results were observed. Since then, we have experimented by changing the dosages of other components. Now we can create an almost unlimited number of neurons from a single skin biopsy," says Malin Parmar.

The possibility of creating large cell cultures opens the way for research projects that were previously impossible. This includes checking the work of medicines, creating more accurate models of diseases, and developing diagnostic methods to detect diseases at an early stage.

The new cells are able not only to mimic the disease, but also the age of the patient. By studying cells in culture, researchers can now track the mechanisms of disease development in "old" brain cells. In order to understand all the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, we need to know how age affects the course of the disease. It is possible that the development of Swedish scientists will make it possible to find a link between the onset of the disease and cell aging. Previous studies based on animal and stem cell experiments have not answered this question.

"This brings us one step closer to reality, because now we can look inside human neurons and see what happens there in these diseases. If all goes well, it could fundamentally change the direction of scientific research and help us better understand the real mechanisms of diseases. We believe that many laboratories around the world would like to start experiments with such cells in order to get closer to the discovery of the treatment of diseases," says Johan Jakobsson, head of the research group in the field of molecular neurogenetics at Lund University.

Article by Drouin‐Ouellet et al. REST suppression mediates neural conversion of adult human fibroblasts via microRNA‐dependent and ‐independent pathways published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  30.06.2017