Skin Cells Reprogrammed into Aged Neurons

Researchers at Sweden’s Lund University (LU) have developed a new method for studying age-related brain disorders, including Huntington’s Disease, that involves converting skin cells into neurons.

To produce new and effective treatments, basic medical research often requires disease models that correspond to specific disease mechanisms or the disease to be studied. It has proven particularly difficult to develop adequate animal or cellular models for Huntington’s Disease. The age-related condition is fatal, and scientists are yet to find any treatment or cure.  

However, in a recent issue of the journal Brain, LU professor of neuroscience Johan Jakobsson and colleagues describe a method to reprogram skin cells into neurons that could been prove valuable to Huntington’s disease research and eventually other age-related brain disorders.  “We took skin biopsies from patients living with Huntington’s disease and reprogrammed the skin biopsies into neurons,”  Jakobsson says. “We then compared these neurons with reprogrammed neurons from healthy people. The results are very interesting. We have found several defects that explain some of the disease mechanisms in neurons from patients with Huntington’s disease. Among other things, we observed that neurons from patients with Huntington’s disease show problems in breaking down and recycling a particular kind of protein—which can lead to a lack of energy in these cells.”

The researchers have also measured the biological age of the cells and observed that the reprogrammed neurons retain their biological age, which is significant if they are to be used for research in the new model system.  “One very important component in our new model system is the age of the neurons. It is possible to measure a cell’s ‘biological age’, which we have done, and these cells retain their true biological age. In other words, the reprogrammed neurons are old, making the model system relevant in the study of other age-related neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s,” says Jakobsson adds.

“We believe our model will provide answers and clues that are significantly more relevant for the disease than the clues obtained from animal studies, and that in the long term it will lead to breakthroughs for some form of treatment”, says Johan Jakobsson.