SEATTLE -- Parse Biosciences, the leading provider of accessible and scalable single cell sequencing solutions, announced a groundbreaking study published in the journal Science that utilized Parse’s single cell technology to uncover how signaling pathways drive the formation of diverse neuron cell subtypes. By linking specific signals to cell fate outcomes, this research provides a powerful framework for generating defined cell types in vitro, which has broad relevance to human biology, disease, and therapeutic development.

Principle investigators Dr. Barbara Treutlein, Head of the Quantitative Development Biology Lab at ETH Zurich, and Dr. Gray Camp, Group Leader at the Institute of Human Biology at Roche, led the experiment.

Through an elegantly designed screening approach spanning 480 morphogens across 700,000 cells, the research team was able to explore how different morphogens interact with pro-neural transcription factors, thereby generating pure populations of different types of neurons from pluripotent stem cells. This work will guide and enable the neuroscience research community to direct and develop pure neuronal cell populations which will help expand our understanding of cell types and cell interactions implicated in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson's, and ALS.

“We were genuinely surprised by the diversity of neurons that we generated, and the data allowed us to develop algorithms to learn how this diversity can arise,” states Treutlein. “Parse Biosciences’ technology delivered the flexibility, scale, and quality to help us explore these complex cellular processes at a deeper level.”

“The beauty of this work is that the underlying strategy, methods, and analyses can be adapted to program and explore any cell type and state, across organ systems and species,” states Camp. “We are excited about what Parse’s technology has enabled for this study.”

“We are thrilled to support this highly impactful study from Dr. Treutlein’s and Dr. Camp’s Labs and are eager to see how their findings inform the wider research community,” states Dr. Charlie Roco, Chief Technology Officer of Parse Biosciences.