Chemical Transdifferentiation: a New Strategy in the Fight against Neurodegenerative Disease

Cell transdifferentiation of somatic cells directly into desirable cells has sprung up in recent years, which also has provided an alternative cell source for cell therapy in regenerative medicine, comparing with cell reprogramming. However, the conventional strategy for generating target cells through transdifferentiation was mainly based on viruses expressing exogenous transcription factors, which was unavoidably related with safety issues when translated into clinical application. Small molecules with more advantages in manipulating cell fate changes has attracted attentions of researchers in regenerative medicine. Especially the advent of chemicallyinduced pluripotent stem cells [1] opens a new era of regeneration and later kindles the light of pursuing diverse chemical cocktails in generating different types of cells, which we refer to as chemical transdifferentition.