2. Academic Validation
  3. Conversion of human urine-derived cells into neuron-like cells by small molecules

Conversion of human urine-derived cells into neuron-like cells by small molecules

  • Mol Biol Rep. 2020 Apr;47(4):2713-2722. doi: 10.1007/s11033-020-05370-1.
Donghui Liu 1 2,  Grigori Rychkov 3 4,  Mohammed Al-Hawwas 1,  Nimshitha Pavathuparambil Abdul Manaph 5,  Fiona Zhou 1 3 4,  Larisa Bobrovskaya 1,  Hong Liao 6,  Xin-Fu Zhou 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia.
  • 2 Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Drug Screening, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tongjiaxiang Street, Nanjing, 210009, China.
  • 3 Discipline of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia.
  • 4 South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia.
  • 5 Neurological Disorders Research Center, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation, Doha, Qatar.
  • 6 Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Drug Screening, China Pharmaceutical University, 24 Tongjiaxiang Street, Nanjing, 210009, China. hliao@cpu.edu.cn.
  • 7 School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia. xin-fu.zhou@unisa.edu.au.
PMID: 32185687 DOI: 10.1007/s11033-020-05370-1
Abstract

Neural cell transplantation is an effective way for treatment of neurological diseases. However, the absence of transplantable human neurons remains a barrier for clinical therapies. Human urine-derived cells, namely renal cells and urine stem cells, have become a good source of cells for reprogramming or trans-differentiation research. Here, we show that human urine-derived cells can be partially converted into neuron-like cells by applying a cocktail of small molecules. Gene expression analysis has shown that these induced cells expressed some neuron-specific genes, and a proportion of the cells are GABAergic neurons. Moreover, whole-cell patch clamping recording has shown that some induced cells have neuron-specific voltage gated Na+ and K+ currents but have failed to generate CA2+ currents and action potentials. Taken together, these results suggest that induced neuronal cells from human urine-derived cells may be useful for Neurological Disease modelling, drug screening and cell therapies.

Keywords

Induced neuronal cells; Small molecules; Stem cells; Trans-differentiation; Urine-derived cells.

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