Testing Autism Drugs in Human Brain Cells - Technology Review: "A team from the University of California, San Diego, and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies devised a way to study brain cells from patients with autism, and found a way reverse cellular abnormalities in neurons that have been associated with autism.
The researchers took skin biopsies from patients with a severe form of autism called Rett syndrome, and genetically reprogrammed those cells into pluripotent stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells have the power to differentiate into any kind of cell in the body, depending on environmental cues during early development. The team differentiated the stem cells into fully functioning neurons, and then studied their functioning. They found that neurons derived from patients with Rett syndrome showed certain abnormalities, including markedly smaller cell bodies, dendrite connections, and decreased cell-to-cell communication."
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