ABSTRACT
Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders of aging first described in 1817 by James Parkinson. The disease is characterized by progressive degeneration and loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantial nigra. The protocol allowed for the generation of cryopreservable neural stem cells and dopaminergic precursors and a final maturation step allowing for over 40% TH+ neurons. Direct reprogramming or induced transdifferentiation refers to the process that allows cells to directly progress from one cell fate to another without an intermediate stem cell fate. Direct reprogramming gets around issues such as unwanted proliferation and tumor generation as well as time required to generate these cells from stem cells which can take weeks to months. Human-induced pluripotent stem cells are an excellent system to study the molecular mechanisms underlying disease development in vitro as they are generated from patient somatic cells.
