Source: Nature
Published online 22 December 2008
Summary:
Nature reports skin cells from a spinal muscular atrophy have been reprogrammed into stem cells that can be used as a model of the disease.
"Skin cells from a patient with a genetic disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) have been reprogrammed into stem cells that can be used as a model of the disease. The research marks an important milestone in creating and using stem cells to understand disease processes and screen drugs. To build an improved model, researchers first took tissue-forming fibroblast cells from the skin of a deceased SMA patient. Then they reprogrammed these cells to become so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which behave just like the embryonic stem cells that are the progenitors of all the body's different cell types. Finally, the scientists developed a new method to turn those iPS cells into large numbers of motor neurons, the cell type affected in SMA."
