Building Brain Cells from Urine

Dec-14-12 A simple new technique for making neurons from urine could alleviate some of the risks associated with using embryonic stem cells, such as the danger of tumor growth.

Stem-cell biologist Duanqing Pei and his team at China's Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health demonstrated the process using kidney epithelial cells found in urine. They inserted new genetic information into the epithelial cells, which caused the cells to grow in a rosette shape common to neural stem cells. When the team inserted the cells into the brains of newborn rats, they found that the cells had taken on the same shape and molecular marker as neurons, but without any tumor growth.

According to geneticist Marc Lalande, sourcing cells in this way allows urine to be collected from nearly anyone, opening up the possibility of making iPS cells and neural progenitors from the same patient.

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