REPROGRAMMING OF SOMATIC CELLS TO NEURONS WITH SMALL MOLECULES

Regenerative medicine faced scientific, methodological and ethical barriers in therapeutic treatment of human CNS diseases for decades. First of all the barriers limited the development of stem cell based transplantation therapeutic approaches. In 2006 the breakthrough study of Yamanaka and colleagues encouraged search for effective means to convert differentiated somatic cells of mammals into targeted cell types, including neurons. Small molecules cocktails were found to enable reprogramming of somatic cells with and without ectopic expression of transcriptional factors and enhance reprogramming efficiency. Here we offer a review of the latest studies reporting induction of neurons with small molecules.