Since induced pluripotent stem cells were first generated from mouse embryonic fibroblasts in 2006, somatic cell reprogramming has become a powerful and valuable tool in many fields of biomedical research, with the potential to lead to the development of in vitro disease models, cell-based drug screening platforms, and ultimately novel cell therapies. Recent research has now demonstrated the direct conversion of fibroblasts into stem, precursor, or mature cell types that are committed in their fate within a specific lineage, such as hematopoietic precursors or mature neurons. This has been achieved by ectopic expression of defined, tissue-specific transcription factors. Several studies have demonstrated direct reprogramming of mouse and human fibroblasts into immature neural stem or precursor cells, either by transient expression of the four pluripotency genes OCT3/4, KLF4, SOX2, and C-MYC or by application of different combinations of up to 11 neural transcription factors. Interestingly, in all of these studies SOX2 was introduced alone or in combination with other transcription factors. In this review we discuss the different combinations of ectopic transcription factors used to generate neural stem/precursor cells from somatic cells, with particular emphasis on SOX2 and its potential to act as a master regulator for reprogramming to a neural precursor state.
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