A success in the laboratory. American researchers have succeeded in transforming skin cells into dopaminergic neurons, which fail in Parkinson’s disease.
Repairing failing neurons: this is an ambitious goal in the fight against Parkinson’s disease. Ambitious but difficult to achieve: the processes are too long, too difficult, the regulations too strict. Researchers at the Jacobs School of Medicine (Buffalo, New York State, United States) may have found the solution: they have discovered a way to transform skin cells into dopaminergic neurons, they explain in Nature Communications. The same ones that are lacking in Parkinson’s patients.
At the origin of this discovery, a transcription protein. Its name: p53. It prevents a cell from changing status and mutating to another type. “Once we lower the expression of p53, things get interesting,” says Jian Feng, lead author of the study. We are able to reprogram fibroblasts into neurons much more easily. “
By reducing the expression of p53 at the right time in the cell cycle, the researchers managed to effect this transformation. The manipulation involves the activation of the enzyme Tet1, which changes the way the genome is read. “Our method is much faster and more efficient than those developed so far,” said Jian Feng. The best available method took up to two weeks to produce 5% dopaminergic neurons. With ours, it is possible to produce 60% of neurons in 10 days. “
Several experiments have demonstrated the functionality of these neurons. It will now be necessary to succeed in implanting them in human patients. But another field of application opens: these same neurons could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of antiparkinsonian drugs.
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