Professor Nobutaka Hattori of the Department of Neurology, Juntendo University School of Medicine has developed a technology to efficiently induce iPS cells produced from human peripheral blood into neural stem cells.We have also succeeded in reproducing the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease using peripheral blood-derived iPS cells.This research was conducted in collaboration with Professor Kazuto Akamatsu of the Center for Genome and Regenerative Medicine and Professor Hideyuki Okano of the Department of Physiology, Keio University School of Medicine.We have agreed to build an iPS cell bank for Parkinson's disease, which is unprecedented in the world, and to collaborate to promote pathological research and regenerative medicine.

 So far, two universities have succeeded in reproducing the pathological mechanism with iPS cells created from patients.However, the burden on the patient was extremely heavy because the skin tissue was cut out and collected, which hindered the expansion of research.In addition, although it was known that iPS cells can be produced from blood cells, it is easy to reflect the properties of the original cells and it is particularly difficult to differentiate into the nervous system, and it does not efficiently differentiate into the nervous system, making effective use of valuable specimens. There was a concern that I couldn't.Therefore, there was a need to develop a method for inducing neural differentiation that is not affected by differences in the cells of origin.

 The group established iPS cells derived from skin fibroblasts and peripheral blood from patients with hereditary Parkinson's disease without neurological disease.By comparing these, we aimed to optimize the induction method for efficient differentiation of blood-derived iPS cells into nervous system cells.As a result, it was found that even with iPS cells prepared from the same human, peripheral blood-derived iPS cells have different gene expression patterns compared to those derived from cutaneous fibroblasts, and show resistance to differentiation into the nervous system.In order to resolve this differentiation resistance, we created an environment for forcibly differentiating undifferentiated iPS cells into the nervous system, and established a culture method for differentiating peripheral blood-derived iPS cells.As a result of differentiating iPS cells derived from the patient's peripheral blood by this method, we succeeded in reproducing mitochondrial dysfunction.

 It is expected that the guidance method clarified in this research will reduce the burden on patients and improve the efficiency of research on intractable neurological diseases, leading to elucidation of the causes of intractable neurological diseases and the development of new treatments and drugs.

Keio University
Juntendo University

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A traditional school with 185 years of history.It is a comprehensive health university consisting of 8 faculties, 4 graduate schools, and 6 affiliated hospitals: Medicine, Sports and Health Science, Medical Nursing, Health Nursing, International Liberal Arts, Health and Medical Sciences, Medical Science, and Health Data Science.Furthermore, in April 2024, we are preparing to open the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences (provisional name) […]

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