ABOVE: Neural progenitors in a human brain organoid are labeled in purple/red and newborn neurons are labeled in green.
CHARLES ARBER, SELINA WRAY, CHRISTOPHER LOVEJOY
Charlie Arber, a stem cell biologist at University College London, works with induced pluripotent stem cell models of inherited forms of dementia. When he and his colleagues started studying several cell lines derived from patients with familial forms of Alzheimer’s disease a few years ago, one of the first things that they noticed was that the cells developed into neurons more quickly than stem cells derived from healthy individuals did, he says.
The researchers looked more closely at the Alzheimer’s cell lines and, in a study published January 12 in Cell Reports, confirmed that neurogenesis—the production of neurons from precursors—in these lines does happen much sooner. When they looked in the brains of familial Alzheimer’s patients after death, they found fewer newborn neurons than in the ...
