In a potentially major breakthrough for regenerative medicine, scientists at MIT have developed a way to convert skin cells directly into brain cells extremely efficiently, without needing to go through the intermediate step of converting them to stem cells first.

“We were able to get to yields where we could ask questions about whether these cells can be viable candidates for the cell replacement therapies, which we hope they could be,” said MIT Professor Katie Galloway. “That’s where these types of reprogramming technologies can take us.”

Converting one type of cell to another — for example, a skin cell to a neuron — can be done through a process that requires the skin cell to be induced into a “pluripotent” ste

A new technique developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology helps convert skin cells into neurons without needing to transform them first into stem cells. As demonstrated in mouse cells, this method makes it easier and more efficient to produce large-scale quantities of neurons.