A series of recent publications have shown that human fibroblasts can be directly converted to functional neurons using denned combinations of transcription factors. The resulting neurons are called induced neurons (iN). When compared with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology, where somatic cells can be reprogrammed to neurons via a pluripotent stem cell state, lineage reprogram-ming offers an appealing short cut to generate functional neurons from fibro-blasts that has several advantages: the process is quicker, less laborious and does not involve a stem cell intermediate Thus, the generation of iNs opens up new and exciting possibilities for generating patient- and/or disease-specific neurons for disease modeling and brain repair.
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