Italian researchers at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute (Milan) have reported their success in transforming human skin cells into functional dopaminergic neurons without inducing pluripotency.  They simply exposed the cells to three neurodevelopmental factors that then caused dopamine generation. “The process described here does not pass through proliferative progenitors that also might be tumorigenic. Thus, these procedures might avoid a dangerous drawback of stem cell therapies while providing a sufficient number of functional dopaminergic neurons amenable for autologous cell replacement therapies.”  MORE