Scientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered a way to convert skin cells into a specific type of brain cell that is affected by Huntington’s disease.

Huntington’s disease is a hereditary degenerative brain disorder that initially affects cognitive ability and mobility, and causes depression, forgetfulness, clumsiness, and involuntary twitching. As the disease progresses, it eventually leads to the inability to walk, speak or swallow. Eventually death will follow from complications including infection, choking, or heart failure.

Senior study author Andrew S. Yoo, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology, and colleagues were able to produce a specific type of brain cell called medium spiny neurons, which play a key role in controlling movement. These are the main cells that are affected in Huntington’s disease.

Adult human skin cells were used instead of mouse cells in this study. The ability to convert adult human cells provides a possible future therapy that uses the patient’s own skin cells that are easily accessible and not rejected by the immune system.

Yoo and his colleagues placed the skin cells in an environment similar to that of brain cells in order to reprogram them. The researchers showed that exposure to two microRNAs altered the mechanisms that control the packaging of DNA. These microRNAs seem to open up these packaged sections of DNA that are crucial for brain cells.

“Not only did these transplanted cells survive in the mouse brain, they showed functional properties similar to those of native cells. These cells are known to extend projections into certain brain regions. And we found the human transplanted cells also connected to these distant targets in the mouse brain. That’s a landmark point about this paper,” said Yoo in a statement.

The findings of the study are published in the journal Neuron.