Abstract
Most current pain studies employ animal models or animal-derived cell lines, owing to the limited availability of neuronal tissues from humans. However, screening to isolate potential new drugs or to decipher or confirm molecular mechanisms requires human systems. Although reprogramming technologies used to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from somatic cells could help to overcome the shortage of human material, their in vitro differentiation to sensory neurons has been inefficient. In this issue of Molecular Therapy, Young et al. report an optimized protocol for the generation of sensory neurons from human embryonic stem cells via small-molecule inhibition.1 The authors were able to generate a highly enriched population of sensory neurons that expressed more than 80% of the ion channels found in adult human dorsal root ganglia (DRG). Indeed, the similarity between the expression profile of endogenous human DRG and the in vitro–differentiated sensory neurons was striking.
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