Stem Cells Dev. 2018 Jan 17. doi: 10.1089/scd.2017.0282. [Epub ahead of print]

Small Molecules for Neural Stem Cell Induction.

Liu D^1,2, Pavathuparambil Abdul Manaph N^3,4, Al-Hawwas M⁵, Zhou XF⁶, Liao H⁷.

Abstract

Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from other somatic cells has provided great hopes for transplantation therapies. However, these cells still cannot be used for clinical application due to the low reprogramming and differentiation efficiency beside the risk of mutagenesis and tumor formation. Compared to iPSCs, induced neural stem cells (iNSCs) are easier to terminally differentiate into neural cells and safer, thus, iNSCs hold more opportunities than iPSCs to treat neural diseases. On the other hand, recent studies have showed that small molecules (SMs) can dramatically improve the efficiency of reprogramming and SMs alone can even convert one kind of somatic cells into another, which is much safer and more effective than transcription factor-based methods. Here, we provide a review of SMs which are generally used in recent neural stem cell induction studies, and discuss the main mechanisms and pathways of each small molecule.