Reprogramming Postnatal Human Epidermal Keratinocytes Toward Functional Neural Crest Fates.

Reinventing the neural crest: direct reprogramming makes iNCCs.

Aberrant neural crest (NC) development is at the origin of many congenital diseases. Given the limitations in human NC cell isolation and expansion, the development of new strategies for NC generation is crucial. In this issue of Cell Stem Cell, Kim et al. (2014) report the direct reprogramming of postnatal fibroblasts into multipotent NC cells.

UV-induced Wnt7a in the human skin microenvironment specifies the fate of neural crest -like cells via suppression of Notch

Multipotent stem cells with neural crest-like properties have been identified in the dermis of human skin. These neural crest stem cell (NCSC)-like cells display self-renewal capacity and differentiate into neural crest derivatives, including epidermal pigment-producing melanocytes. NCSC-like cells share many properties with aggressive melanoma cells, such as high migratory capabilities and exp...

Evidence for nerve growth factor-mediated paracrine effects in human epidermis

Nerve growth factor (NGF) is critical to the development and maintenance of the peripheral nervous system, but its possible roles in other organ systems are less well characterized. We have recently shown that human epidermal melanocytes, pigment cells derived from the neural crest, express the NGF receptor (p75 NGF-R) in vitro (Peacocke, M., M. Yaar, C. P. Mansur, M. V. Chao, and B. A. Gilchre...

Isolation and in vitro cultivation of human skin Keratinocytes and preparation of epidermal sheet

Induction of human keratinocytes into enamel-secreting ameloblasts.

Mammalian tooth development relies heavily on the reciprocal and sequential interactions between cranial neural crest-derived mesenchymal cells and stomadial epithelium. During mouse tooth development, odontogenic potential, that is, the capability to direct an adjacent tissue to form a tooth, resides in dental epithelium initially, and shifts subsequently to dental mesenchyme. Recent studies h...