Personalized cell-replacement strategy demonstrates success in a person with Parkinson’s disease

Reprogramming a person's own skin cells to replace the cells in the brain that are lost during Parkinson’s disease – also known as a cell-replacement strategy – may be possible, according to a team of researchers from McLean Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital (both MA, USA). The study, which has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, describes how the investigators reprogrammed a 69-year-old patient’s skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells and then differentiated them to take on characteristics of dopaminergic neurons. “Because the cells come from the patient, they are readily available and can be reprogrammed in such...