Patent ID: 6949380

Claim:
An in vitro method of transdifferentiating an epidermal basal cell having one or more morphological, physiological and/or immunological feature(s) of a neuronal cell, comprising: (a) culturing a proliferating epidermal basal cell population comprising one or more epidermal basal cell(s), said cell(s) derived from the skin of a mammalian subject; (b) exposing the cell(s) to an amount of fetuin, noggin, chordin gremlin or follistatin antagonist of bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) effective to antagonize endogenous BMP signal transduction activity; (c) growing the cell(s) in the presence of at least one antisense oligonucleotide comprising a segment of a human MSX1 gene and/or a segment of a human HES1 gene, in an amount effective to suppress the expression of functional gene product of MSX1 or HES1, whereby the cell is transdifferentiated into a cell having one or more morphological, physiological and/or immunological feature(s) of a neuronal cell; and (d) growing the transdifferentiated cell in a medium comprising a retinoid compound and a signal molecule selected from the group consisting of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF), nerve growth factor (NGF), sonic hedgehog, sonic hedgehog aminoterminal peptide, neurotrophin (NT)-3, and neurotrophin (NT)-4; and wherein the physiological and/or immunological feature comprises expression of a neuronal cell marker selected from the group consisting of neurofilament M, neural-specific β-tubulin, neural-specific enolase, and microtubule associated protein 2, or a combination of any of these; and wherein the morphological feature comprises one or more morphological neurite-like process(es) at least about 50 micrometers in length.