http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/Researchers+human+skin+engineer+brain+
cells/6142996/story.html





Researchers use human skin to engineer brain cells
 
 
 

Laboratory reprogramming; Breakthrough could help in treatments for
Alzheimer's, epilepsy and stroke
 
 
 
By RICHARD GRAY, London Daily TelegraphFebruary 13, 2012
 
 
 










 
 





British scientists are claiming a breakthrough after creating brain tissue
from human skin.
 
The researchers have, for the first time, generated a crucial type of brain
cells in the laboratory by reprogramming skin cells.
 
They say it could speed up the hunt for new treatments for conditions such
as Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and stroke.
 
Until now it has only been possible to generate tissue from the cerebral
cortex, the area of the brain where most major neurological diseases occur,
by using controversial embryonic stem cells, obtained by the destruction of
an embryo.
 
This has meant the supply of brain tissue available for research has been
limited because of ethical concerns and limited availability.
 
Scientists at the University of Cambridge say they have overcome this
problem, showing for the first time that it is possible to reprogram adult
human skin cells so that they develop into neurons found in the cerebral
cortex.
 
Initially, brain cells grown in this way could be used to help gain a better
understanding of how the brain develops and what goes wrong when it is
affected by disease.
 
Eventually, scientists hope the cells could be used to provide healthy
tissue that can be implanted into patients to treat neurodegenerative
diseases and brain damage.
 
Rick Livesey, who led the research at the university's Gurdon Institute,
said: "The cerebral cortex makes up 75 per cent of the human brain. It is
where all the important processes that make us human take place. It is,
however, also the major place where disease can occur.
 
"We have been able to take reprogrammed skin cells so they develop into
brain stem cells and then essentially replay brain development in the
laboratory.
 
"We can study brain development and what goes wrong when it is affected by
disease in a way we haven't been able to before. We see it as a breakthrough
in what will now be possible."
 
The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that is responsible for most of
the high-level thought processes such as memory, language and consciousness.
 
While human brain cells have been created from stem cells before, this has
relied upon embryonic stem cells. Attempts to make them from skin cells have
produced neurons that are not found in the cerebral cortex.
 
Livesey and his colleagues were able to create the two major types of neuron
that form the cerebral cortex from reprogrammed skin cells and show that
they were identical to those created from embryonic stem cells.
 
Livesey, whose findings are
 
published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, said this may allow damaged
tissue to be replaced by brain cells grown in the laboratory from a sample
of a patient's skin.
 
He added: "You don't need to rebuild damage to recover function as the brain
is quite good at recovering itself - it does this after stroke for example.
 
"However, it may be possible to give it some extra real estate that it can
use to do this.
 
"We can make large numbers of cerebral cortex neurons by taking a sample of
skin from anybody, so in principal it should be possible to put these back
into the patients."
 
C Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette


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