Every time a biologist drives stem cells to differentiate into a specialized cell type, patients of all sorts of diseases, disorders, and injuries allow their hope to grow. This process is a key step in developing stem cell therapeutics, and recently a research group learned how to drive differentiation of a specific type of neuron that is affected in Huntington’s disease.
hPS (human pluripotent stem) cells have the ability to differentiate into countless specific cell types. hPS cells can be either human embryonic stem cells or cells induced in a laboratory setting to be pluripotent (the ability to differentiate into many cell types). hPS cells can generate neuronal cell types, so their use in studying neurological diseases and regenerative therapies for these diseases is notable. Huntington’s disease is an untreatable genetic neurodegenerative disease that typically begins with the degeneration of medium-sized spiny neurons (MSNs), neurons found in a specific region of the brain called the basal ganglia. A recent paper in the journal Development describes how hPS cells could be driven to differentiate into MSNs. Carri and colleagues exposed hPS cells to a finely-tuned mixture of regulatory proteins and molecules, and the resulting MSNs showed characteristics identical to mature, authentic MSNs. hPS cells were differentiated into neurons that contained DARPP-32 (green), a marker for MSNs identity.
Credit:
Carri, A., Onorati, M., Lelos, M., Castiglioni, V., Faedo, A., Menon, R., Camnasio, S., Vuono, R., Spaiardi, P., Talpo, F., Toselli, M., Martino, G., Barker, R., Dunnett, S., Biella, G., & Cattaneo, E. (2012). Developmentally coordinated extrinsic signals drive human pluripotent stem cell differentiation toward authentic DARPP-32+ medium-sized spiny neurons Development, 140 (2), 301-312 DOI: 10.1242/dev.084608
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