Regenerative Medicine - Scientist Converts Human Skin Cells Into Functional Brain Cells
Thursday, July 28, 2011 - 15:10
in Biology & Nature
Sheng Ding, PhD, has shown a new method for transforming adult skin cells into neurons that are capable of transmitting brain signals - one of the first documented experiments for transforming an adult human's skin cells into functioning brain cells.Ding, of the Gladstone Institutes, said his work builds on the cell-reprogramming work of another Gladstone scientist, Senior Investigator Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD. Yamanaka's 2006 discovery of a way to turn adult skin cells into cells that act like embryonic stem cells has advanced the fields of cell biology and stem-cell research. read more