Rinsho Shinkeigaku (Clinical Neurology)

Symposium 1

Exploring the neural diseases using stem cell technology

Wado Akamatsu

Keio University, School of Medicine

The rapid and efficient induction of neural stem cells (NSCs) from pluripotent stem cells is required for the research of patient-specific iPS cells and regenerative medicine to induce their own neural cells. Here, we induced NSCs from human pluripotent stem cells within 2 weeks and these clonal NSCs were expanded efficiently by their self-renewal ability. Further, we directly induced NSCs from both mouse and human fibroblasts using four reprogramming factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, and cMyc) without the clonal isolation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Since these NSCs rapidly developed into mature gliogenic neural stem cells, we were able to purify these rapidly differentiating NSCs without contamination of differentiation-resistant pluripotent cells. These methods will facilitate high throughput screening of phonotypes appeared in neural cells induced from the somatic cells derived from sporadic neurodegenerative diseases.
Full Text of this Article in Japanese PDF (200K)

(CLINICA NEUROL, 52: 937|938, 2012)
key words: Direct induction, Induced pluripotent stem cells, Embryonic stem cells, Neural stem cells

(Received: 23-May-12)