Using induced pluripotent stem cells for modeling Parkinson’s disease

Figure 1 Potential applications of induced pluripotent stem cells for study of Parkinson’s disease. Somatic cells are extracted from either normal individuals or patients and then reprogrammed to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Gene editing technology enables one to generate knockin mutant Parkinson’s disease (PD) iPSCs and isogenic control cell lines. Dopamine (DA) neurons can be successfully differentiated from iPSCs. Both patient-derived and gene-editing iPSCs could be powerful tools for modeling PD for mechanistic studies and drug discovery. Healthy or corrected iPSCs could serve as normal controls and cell sources for cell therapy. iPSCs: Induced pluripotent stem cells; DA: Dopaminergic.