The global gene expression pattern between human fibroblasts and human neural stem cells

Recent advances in direct reprogramming using cell type-specific transcription factors provide an unprecedented opportunity for rapid generation of desired human cell types from easily accessible tissues. However, due to the diversity of conversion factors that facilitate the process, an arduous screening step is inevitable to find the appropriate combination(s). Here, we show that under chemically defined conditions minimal pluripotency factors are sufficient to directly reprogram human fibroblasts into stably self-renewing neural progenitor/stem cells (NSCs), but without passing through a pluripotent intermediate stage. These NSCs can be expanded and propagated in vitro without losing their potential to differentiate into various neuronal subtypes and glia. Our direct reprogramming strategy represents a simple and advanced paradigm of direct conversion that will provide an unlimited source of human neural cells for cell therapy, disease modeling, and drug screening.

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Zhu S, Ambasudhan R, Sun W, Kim HJ, Talantova M, Wang X, Zhang M, Zhang Y, Laurent T, Parker J, Kim HS, Zaremba JD, Saleem S, Sanz-Blasco S, Masliah E, McKercher SR, Cho YS, Lipton SA, Kim J, Ding S