| Literature DB >> 27656126 |
Serena Barral1, Manju A Kurian2.
Abstract
The study of neurological disorders often presents with significant challenges due to the inaccessibility of human neuronal cells for further investigation. Advances in cellular reprogramming techniques, have however provided a new source of human cells for laboratory-based research. Patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can now be robustly differentiated into specific neural subtypes, including dopaminergic, inhibitory GABAergic, motorneurons and cortical neurons. These neurons can then be utilized for in vitro studies to elucidate molecular causes underpinning neurological disease. Although human iPSC-derived neuronal models are increasingly regarded as a useful tool in cell biology, there are a number of limitations, including the relatively early, fetal stage of differentiated cells and the mainly two dimensional, simple nature of the in vitro system. Furthermore, clonal variation is a well-described phenomenon in iPSC lines. In order to account for this, robust baseline data from multiple control lines is necessary to determine whether a particular gene defect leads to a specific cellular phenotype. Over the last few years patient-derived neural cells have proven very useful in addressing several mechanistic questions related to central nervous system diseases, including early-onset neurological disorders of childhood. Many studies report the clinical utility of human-derived neural cells for testing known drugs with repurposing potential, novel compounds and gene therapies, which then can be translated to clinical reality. iPSCs derived neural cells, therefore provide great promise and potential to gain insight into, and treat early-onset neurological disorders.Entities:
Keywords: childhood neurological disorders; drug screening; gene therapies; iPSCs; in vitro disease modeling; isogenic control
Year: 2016 PMID: 27656126 PMCID: PMC5012159 DOI: 10.3389/fnmol.2016.00078
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Front Mol Neurosci ISSN: 1662-5099 Impact factor: 5.639
Figure 1Use of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for modeling genetic neurological diseases. Genetic screening of patients affected by a neurological disorder may lead to the identification of specific mutations causing disease. Patient-derived somatic cells (fibroblast and other cell types) can be then reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. iPSCs carrying the disease-related mutation (indicated in red) can be then differentiated into the neural cells type (neurons and glial cells) which are affected in the disease. This allows for the in vitro study of the molecular mechanisms downstream the genetic mutation. In order to overcome genetic background variability and to validate the effect of the genetic mutation on phenotype observed in vitro, isogenic control iPSCs can be generated via genomic correction of the mutation. Moreover, in vitro differentiated cells can be used for high-throughput screening of drugs or the validation of specific genetic therapies that can then be translated into clinical practice.
Utility of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) in childhood-onset neurodevelopmental and neurological disorders.
| Disease | Gene(s) | Differentiated cell type | Molecular characterization | Compound screening | Gene/RNA therapy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rett syndrome | Neural progenitor cells | Muotri et al. ( | Marchetto et al. ( | ||
| Fragile X syndrome | Neural precursor cells | Urbach et al. ( | Kaufmann et al. ( | Park et al. ( | |
| Microcephaly | Neurons | Lancaster et al. ( | |||
| Angelman/Prader-Willi syndromes | Neurons | Chamberlain et al. ( | |||
| Timothy syndrome | Neural progenitor cells | Krey et al. ( | Paşca et al. ( | ||
| Phelan-McDermid syndrome | Chromosome 22q13 deletion | Neurons (forebrain) | Shcheglovitov et al. ( | ||
| Dravet syndrome | Neurons (dopaminergic, GABAergic) | Higurashi et al. ( | Jiao et al. ( | ||
| Early infantile epileptic encephalopathy | Neurons (glutamatergic, GABAergic) | Yamashita et al. ( | |||
| Hereditary spastic paraplegia | Cortical neural progenitor cells | Denton et al. ( | Zhu et al. ( | ||
| Neural progenitor cells | Nayler et al. ( | Lee et al. ( | |||
| Friedrich’s ataxia | Neural progenitor cells | Liu et al. ( | Shan et al. ( | Li et al. ( | |
| Huntington’s disease | Striatal neural precursor cells | Camnasio et al. ( | Guo et al. ( | An et al. ( | |
| Lesch-Nyhan syndrome | Neurons | Mastrangelo et al. ( | |||
| Niemann-Pick type C disease | Neurons | Trilck et al. ( | Efthymiou et al. ( | ||
| Neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis disease | Neurons | Lojewski et al. ( | |||
| Gaucher’s disease | Neurons (dopaminergic) | Awad et al. ( | Tiscornia et al. ( | ||
| Metachromatic leukodystrophy | Neural stem cells | Doerr et al. ( | |||
| X-linked Adrenoleukodystrophy | Neurons | Jang et al. ( | |||
| Spinal muscular atrophy | Neurons (motor neurons, forebrain neurons, sensory neurons) | Ebert et al. ( | Sareen et al. ( | Corti et al. ( | |