Release date: 2017-10-16
In a few simple steps, a large number of human brain cells can be produced. This is a research team led by Professor Li Gan, a Chinese scholar at the University of California, San Francisco, who developed a cost-effective new technology.
The industry believes that this technology solves the existing problems of drug screening for brain diseases and is a powerful tool for the entire scientific community.
Existing Problems
When developing potential drugs for brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, researchers must test on human cells to confirm that they are beneficial to patients. Historically, these experiments have been performed in cancer cells that are prone to proliferative culture and often do not match the biological characteristics of human brain cells.
The problem is that brain cells derived from actual humans cannot survive in culture dishes, so they need to be modified to suit the needs of the laboratory. Many scientists use induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to produce human brain neurons or glial cells to solve this problem. However, their production process is complex and expensive, and it is difficult to scale up for large experiments. Moreover, the cells produced by current methods are heterogeneous, ie different from each other. This can lead to inconsistent results in drug screening.
The birth of new technology
This time, the research team at San Francisco developed iPSCs containing inducible transgenic neuronin 2 (neurogenin). Neuron 2 is a transcription factor that rapidly converts iPSC into neurons. This approach can generate thousands of neurons from a single iPSC. This means that the brain cells produced each time are the same.
Professor Gan, the author of the article, pointed out that using traditional methods to bring too much variability makes replication experiments quite difficult: "So, the ability to produce homogenous human brain cells is very exciting." 
Professor Li Gan picture source UCSF
In the study, the research team created a simple two-step approach. This allows scientists to precisely control the number of brain cells they produce and makes it easier to replicate their results from one experiment to another.
This technology also greatly accelerated the process of preparation. In the past, it took a few months to produce brain cells. Professor Gan and her team can now complete a large number of genetic engineering in one to two weeks and have active neurons in one month.
Will be a powerful tool for the entire scientific community
The gratifying results of the study allowed Professor Gan and her team to realize the potential of this new technology to screen for drugs and study disease mechanisms. In order to prove it, they tested it with the drug screening of Alzheimer's disease in their hands, and finally got a positive answer.
Nowadays, news about this new technology has spread. People from different scientific departments have knocked on Professor Gan's door to understand it. Professor Gan and her team don't share it. Some of them did not even have experience in cell culture, but they successfully repeated two steps to produce homogeneous brain cells and promote scientific discovery.
The details of this new technology were also published in the journal Stem Cell Reports on October 10, 2017. The full text of this article is freely available, and Professor Gan hopes it will bring more discoveries to help millions of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Source: Bio-Exploration
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