The limited access to patient neurons greatly impedes the progress of research in neurological diseases. Reprogramming of human neurons from adult fibroblasts provides an unprecedented approach to deciphering the molecular pathogenesis underlying disease conditions. Using lentiviral delivery of transcription factors, we can generate human neurons from adult fibroblast via two strategies. One strategy is the direct conversion of fibroblasts into neurons (for example, directly induced motor neurons, diMNs). The other strategy is induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)-based reprogramming and differentiation (for example, iPSC-MNs). Using these patient-specific neurons, research efforts are focusing on the molecular and cellular pathophysiology of neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer disease (AD), Dystonia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

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                                                                     Selected Publications

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Ding B*. (2022). Novel insights into the pathogenesis of DYT1 dystonia from induced patient-derived neurons. Neural Regen Res. 17(3):561-562.

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Akter M, Cui H, Chen Y-H and Ding B*. (2021). Generation of two induced pluripotent stem cell lines with heterozygous and homozygous GAG deletion in TOR1A gene from a healthy hiPSC line.  Stem Cell Research. 56 (2021)102536 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scr.2021.102536

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Ding B*, Tang Y, Ma S, Akter M, Liu ML, Zang T, Zhang CL.(2021). Disease modeling with human neurons reveals LMNB1 dysregulation underlying DYT1 dystonia. J Neurosci. 2021 Jan 15:JN-RM-2507-20. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2507-20.2020. PMID: 33468570

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Ding B*. (2021). Generation of patient-specific motor neurons in modeling movement diseases. Neural Regen Res 16(9):1799-1800.

 

Ding B, Akter M and Zhang C-L. (2020). Differential Influence of Sample Sex and Neuronal Maturation on mRNA and Protein Transport in Induced Human Neurons. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 13:46. 

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Sepehrimanesh M, and Ding B* (2020). Generation and Optimization of Highly Pure Motor Neurons from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells via Lentiviral Delivery of Transcription Factors. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol. 319: C771–C780.

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