Cambridge, England, Apr 9, 2008 / 05:13 am
A new study from scientists at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reports that reprogrammed skin cells can become functioning neurons when transplanted into the brains of mice and rats.
In what the MIT Technology Review calls a “proof of concept” finding, the researchers report that the cells can improve symptoms in a rat model of Parkinson’s disease.
The use of the reprogrammed cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS), could sidestep ethical and logistical obstacles that afflict stem cell research which destroys human embryos.
The research team, led by Rudolph Jaenisch at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, published its results in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.” The researchers used a previous method for reprogramming cells in which the skin cells of a mouse can be made pluripotent when infected with a retrovirus carrying four specific genes.