Led by Dr. Peiyee Lee and Dr. Richard Gatti, researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have used induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to advance disease-in-a-dish modeling of a rare genetic disorder, ataxia telangiectasia (A-T). Their discovery shows the positive effects of drugs that may lead to effective new treatments for the fatal neurodegenerative disease. iPS cells are made from patients' skin cells, rather than from embryos, and they can become any type of cells, including brain cells, in the laboratory. The study was published online on May 7, 2013 in Nature Communications. People with A-T begin life with neurological deficits that become devastating through progressive loss of function in a part of the brain called the cerebellum, which leads to severe difficulty with movement and coordination. A-T patients also suffer frequent infections due to their weakened immune systems and have an increased risk for cancer. The disease is caused by lost function in a gene, ATM, that normally repairs damaged DNA in the cells and preserves normal function. Developing a human neural cell model to understand A-T's neurodegenerative process — and create a platform for testing new treatments — was critical because the disease presents differently in humans and laboratory animals. Scientists commonly use mouse models to study A-T, but mice with the disease do not experience the more debilitating effects that humans do. In mice with A-T, the cerebellum appears normal and they do not exhibit the obvious degeneration seen in the human brain. Dr. Lee and colleagues used iPS cell–derived neural cells developed from skin cells of A-T patients with a specific type of genetic mutation to create a disease-in-a-dish model.Login Or Register To Read Full Story