Simple Generation of a High Yield Culture of Induced Neurons from Human Adult Skin Fibroblasts

Direct neuronal reprogramming generates neurons to maintain the age of the starting somatic cell. Here, we describe a single vector-based method to generate induced neurons from dermal fibroblasts obtained from adult human donors.We thank Marie Persson Vejgården for technical assistance. The research leading to these results has received funding from the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme: FP/2007-2013 Neuro Stem Cell Repair (no. 602278) and ERC Grant Agreement no. 30971, the Swedish Research Council (grant agreement 521-2012-5624, 2016-00873 and 70862601/ Bagadilico), Swedish Parkinson Foundation (Parkinsonfonden), and the Strategic Research Area at Lund University Multipark (multidisciplinary research in Parkinson’s disease). Janelle Drouin-Ouellet is supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) fellowship (#358492), and Roger Barker is supported by an NIHR Biomedical Research Centre grant to the University of Cambridge/Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Malin Parmar is a New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator. Shelby Shrigley is funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 Programme (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2015) under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network and Grant Agreement No. 676408

After the rain skies appear more clear and blue dear [first line of chorus]

Performance Medium: Piano, Voice and Chord

The walls are talking: wallpaper, art and culture

Sonia Boyce was one of the artists featured in this exhibition. In 1994 Sonia Boyce designed her first wallpaper, Clapping, for Wish You Were Here, an installation of domestic-style spaces created by the artists’ group BANK. It was shown in an orange and white colourway. For the Walls are Talking exhibition, Clapping uses a black and white hand print, evoking a feeling of claustrophobia and predatory menace. Another Boyce wallpaper, Lovers Rock was inspired by popular music and explores our physical interaction with the spaces we live in. The paper is white; the only decorations are the words at about hip-height that have been blind embossed, from Susan Cadogan’s hit ‘Hurt so Good’ (1975). At parties, when this song was played, couples would rub and sway up against the walls, responding to the intense sensual message of the music. The Lover’s Rock wallpaper would be rubbed and marked at hip height, evoking and to commemorates this tactile encounter between bodies and walls. Music is also the subject of Boyce’s recent Devotional Wallpaper (2008), which was created as part of some reminiscence sessions where a group of women (with Boyce herself) pooled their memories of black British musicians and singers. Boyce has represented these reminiscences in various ways, including an etching for the Rivington Place portfolio (2007), by inscribing the names on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery (2007), and now as silk-screened wallpaper, where 200 names are listed, each framed by radiating concentric lines. This roll-call of fame is also a memorial, a list of luminaries of the kind found in town halls, schools and sports clubs where the names of prizewinners are recorded in chronological sequence

Impact of α-synuclein pathology on transplanted hESC-derived dopaminergic neurons in a humanized α-synuclein rat model of PD

Preclinical assessment of the therapeutic potential of dopamine (DA) neuron replacement in Parkinson's disease (PD) has primarily been performed in the 6-hydroxydopamine toxin model. While this is a good model to assess graft function, it does not reflect the pathological features or progressive nature of the disease. In this study, we establish a humanized transplantation model of PD that better recapitulates the main disease features, obtained by coinjection of preformed human α-synuclein (α-syn) fibrils and adeno-associated virus (AAV) expressing human wild-type α-syn unilaterally into the rat substantia nigra (SN). This model gives rise to DA neuron dysfunction and progressive loss of DA neurons from the SN and terminals in the striatum, accompanied by extensive α-syn pathology and a prominent inflammatory response, making it an interesting and relevant model in which to examine long-term function and integrity of transplanted neurons in a PD-like brain. We transplanted DA neurons derived from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into the striatum and assessed their survival, growth, and function over 6 to 18 wk. We show that the transplanted cells, even in the presence of ongoing pathology, are capable of innervating the DA-depleted striatum. However, on closer examination of the grafts, we found evidence of α-syn pathology in the form of inclusions of phosphorylated α-syn in a small fraction of the grafted DA neurons, indicating host-to-graft transfer of α-syn pathology, a phenomenon that has previously been observed in PD patients receiving fetal tissue grafts but has not been possible to demonstrate and study in toxin-based animal models