Dr. Sergiu Pașcă

Absolutely.

And especially when it is in the brain where there's not enough space.

So we know that anything that grows in the cranial cavity will actually push down vital centers.

So there are certainly risks associated with that.

So around like 15, 16 years ago, we were able for the first time to get some of the cells that are now known as induced pluripotent stem cells.

These are the Yamanaka.

Yes.

Or iPS cells.

So induced because they've been induced to become pluripotent in an artificial way.

But again, they stay like that.

So you can share them with anybody else like afterwards.

So we got some of those first cells in those early days.

And now the question was, how do we make neurons?

And what you do is you really kind of like leverage the...

everything that is known in developmental biology.

So we already know that there are certain molecules that are very important for making neurons.

So all you do is you put those cells in a dish, in a plastic dish, in a petri dish, and then you start, almost like when you cook, you start adding various molecules on top, and you see what happens.

And we knew that it's actually quite easy to make neurons.

That was already known.

There have been a lot of experiments done the decade before that showed that even if you just remove some of the factors that maintain those cells pluripotent, those pluripotent stem cells will start now to differentiate, and they like to become neural cells.