Professor Shin Injae Develops Material that Induces Generation of Neurons from Muscle Cells The research team of Professor Shin Injae of the Chemistry department has created a chemical compound that generates neurons from human and mouse muscle cells. This is the first instance worldwide that such an attempt has resulted in success. This discovery heralds a new age in which muscle cells taken from people with neurodegenerative diseases such as stroke, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease may be transformed into neurons with chemical compounds. The newly obtained neurons would then be implanted back into the patients to replace the original, damaged neurons. This would mean that people with the hitherto “incurable” neurodegenerative diseases may be able to function normally. Professor Shin’s team announced their findings on July 9 through the Journal of the American Chemical Society in an article titled “Synthetic Small Molecules that Induce Neurogenesis in Skeletal Muscle.” And on July 12, the Chemical & Engineering News, the news journal of the Society, reported this discovery as a significant breakthrough. The research that led to this discovery was done as part of the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation’s National Research Lab project and involved differentiating easily obtained cells and tissue into neurons by using chemical compounds. These results were achieved after three years of hard work. Neurodegenerative diseases, caused when neurons are damaged, are difficult to treat because neurons do not regenerate well when damaged. Current treatments slow the rate of degeneration, but none are able to regenerate or replace the damaged neurons. There are many ongoing research projects worldwide that use stem cells to treat neurodegenerative diseases, but the use of stem cells involves potential technical and ethical problems. In order to avoid such ethical issues, the research team of Professor Shin obtained human muscle tissue from the patients, and muscle cells extracted from this tissue obtained were treated with the new chemical to obtain the neurons. “We still need to go though the animal testing stage before actually developing the cure,” Professor Shin explained, “but the fact that such a chemical compound was discovered is incredible on its own.”