May 1, 2015
Training pig skin cells for neural development
By Charlene Betourney
A pig's skin cells may hold the key to new treatments and cures for devastating human neurological diseases. Researchers from the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center have discovered a process of turning pig induced pluripotent stem cells into induced neural stem cells.
The results, published in Stem Cells and Development and based on the same process that neural stem cells use to develop in humans, allows the team to better understand degenerative neural diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's and ALS.
"For the first time, we really do have an animal blueprint, which mimics that of a human, and could potentially allow us to watch neuro diseases as they develop," said Steven Stice, RBC director and the project's principal investigator.
Stice, a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and D.W. Brooks Distinguished Professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, has published extensively on the use of human neural progenitors, for which he holds an issued patent and more than 25 publications, specific to this cell type.
