Dr. Paul Chapple’s lab has successfully grown cells from a small biopsy of ARSACS patient skin and has reprogrammed them to become stem cells which can turn into other cell types. The following step was to grow ARSACS neurons from such stem cells. This resulted in obtaining ARSACS patient neurons in a petri dish available for research; a useful tool for modelling the disease. Image 3 shows some of these neurons, and in particular their long axonal process. See the following images: Image 1: ARSACS fibroblast, Image 2: iPSC colonies, Image 3: ARSACS derived neurons, Image 4: ARSACS fibroblasts mitochondria.
