Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Stem Cells. Feb 26, 2016; 8(2): 32-46
Published online Feb 26, 2016. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v8.i2.32
Generation of diverse neural cell types through direct conversion
Gayle F Petersen, Padraig M Strappe
Gayle F Petersen, Padraig M Strappe, School of Biomedical Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia
Author contributions: Petersen GF prepared the manuscript; Strappe PM critically evaluated the manuscript.
Supported by The Charles Sturt University Writing Up Award.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Padraig M Strappe, PhD, School of Biomedical Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Boorooma Street, Wagga Wagga, NSW 2678, Australia. pstrappe@csu.edu.au
Telephone: +61-2-69332968 Fax: +61-2-69332958
Received: July 3, 2015
Peer-review started: August 1, 2015
First decision: November 3, 2015
Revised: November 18, 2015
Accepted: December 29, 2015
Article in press: January 4, 2016
Published online: February 26, 2016
Abstract

A characteristic of neurological disorders is the loss of critical populations of cells that the body is unable to replace, thus there has been much interest in identifying methods of generating clinically relevant numbers of cells to replace those that have been damaged or lost. The process of neural direct conversion, in which cells of one lineage are converted into cells of a neural lineage without first inducing pluripotency, shows great potential, with evidence of the generation of a range of functional neural cell types both in vitro and in vivo, through viral and non-viral delivery of exogenous factors, as well as chemical induction methods. Induced neural cells have been proposed as an attractive alternative to neural cells derived from embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells, with prospective roles in the investigation of neurological disorders, including neurodegenerative disease modelling, drug screening, and cellular replacement for regenerative medicine applications, however further investigations into improving the efficacy and safety of these methods need to be performed before neural direct conversion becomes a clinically viable option. In this review, we describe the generation of diverse neural cell types via direct conversion of somatic cells, with comparison against stem cell-based approaches, as well as discussion of their potential research and clinical applications.

Keywords: Adult stem cells, Embryonic stem cells, Generation of neural cells, Induced pluripotent stem cells, In vitro differentiation, In vivo differentiation, Clinical applications, Direct conversion, Induced neural cells

Core tip: The process of neural direct conversion, in which cells of one lineage are converted into cells of a neural lineage without first inducing pluripotency, shows great potential for the generation of a range of neural cell types, providing an attractive alternative to neural cells derived from embryonic or induced pluripotent stem cells. In this review, we describe the generation of diverse neural cell types via direct conversion of somatic cells, with comparison against stem cell-based approaches, as well as discussion of their potential research and clinical applications.