Neural cell transplantation is an effective way for treatment of neurological diseases. However, the absence of transplantable human neurons remains a barrier for clinical therapies. Human urine-derived cells, namely renal cells and urine stem cells, have become a good source of cells for reprogramming or trans-differentiation research. Here, we show that human urine-derived cells can be partially converted into neuron-like cells by applying a cocktail of small molecules. Gene expression analysis has shown that these induced cells expressed some neuron-specific genes, and a proportion of the cells are GABAergic neurons. Moreover, whole-cell patch clamping recording has shown that some induced cells have neuron-specific voltage gated Na+ and K+ currents but have failed to generate Ca2+ currents and action potentials. Taken together, these results suggest that induced neuronal cells from human urine-derived cells may be useful for neurological disease modelling, drug screening and cell therapies.

中文翻译：

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人尿来源的细胞通过小分子转化为神经元样细胞。

神经细胞移植是治疗神经系统疾病的有效方法。然而，缺乏可移植的人类神经元仍然是临床治疗的障碍。人尿来源的细胞，即肾细胞和尿干细胞，已经成为用于重编程或转分化研究的细胞的良好来源。在这里，我们显示了通过应用小分子混合物，人类尿液衍生的细胞可以部分转化为神经元样细胞。基因表达分析表明，这些诱导的细胞表达了一些神经元特异性基因，其中一部分是GABA能神经元。此外，全细胞膜片钳记录表明，某些诱导细胞具有神经元特异性电压门控的Na +和K +电流，但未能产生Ca2 +电流和动作电位。在一起