Abstract
Human neural stem cells hold great promise for research and therapy in neural disease. We describe the generation of integration-free and expandable human neural progenitor cells (NPCs). We combined an episomal system to deliver reprogramming factors with a chemically defined culture medium to reprogram epithelial-like cells from human urine into NPCs (hUiNPCs). These transgene-free hUiNPCs can self-renew and can differentiate into multiple functional neuronal subtypes and glial cells in vitro. Although functional in vivo analysis is still needed, we report that the cells survive and differentiate upon transplant into newborn rat brain.
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Acknowledgements
We thank M. Esterban for helpful suggestions, Z. Li for providing support in the initial phase of this work and members of our labs for their kind help. This work is supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant nos. XDA01020202 and XDA01020401); National Basic Research Program of China, 973 Program of China (2012CB966503 and 2012CB966802); National S&T Major Special Project on Major New Drug Innovation (2011ZX09102-010); and National Natural Science Foundation of China (31200970 and 91213304). D.P. and G.P. are supported by the 100 Talents Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
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G.P., Lihui, W. and D.P. conceived hypotheses and designed the experiments. Lihui, W. and W.H. performed the experiments and generated data in all figures. In addition, Linli, W., D.Q., Y.X. and Z.S. performed experiments for Figure 1 and Supplementary Figure 2; H.S., W.W. and K.F.S. participated in experiments and analysis for Figure 5; X.B. provided reagents and experimental assistance for miR302–367; B.L. performed the experiments for Figure 1; and H.W. and J.H. performed the experiments for Figure 4. G.P. and D.P. wrote the paper.
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Wang, L., Wang, L., Huang, W. et al. Generation of integration-free neural progenitor cells from cells in human urine. Nat Methods 10, 84–89 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2283
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2283
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