“…hESCs are pluripotent cells that have been derived from the inner cell mass of an early-stage embryo (Thomson et al, 1998) while iPSCs are generated from adult somatic cells, usually skin fibroblast cells, that are induced to pluripotency via a combination of four transcription factors (Takahashi and Yamanaka, 2006;Takahashi et al, 2007). Advances over the last decade or so, in defining differentiation conditions have made it possible to directly drive differentiation of human pluripotent cells to DA neurons and use these derived neurons to model PD in a dish (Yang et al, 2008;Chambers et al, 2009;Swistowski et al, 2010;Kriks et al, 2011;Gonzalez et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2014;Singh et al, 2017;Barbuti et al, 2020;Kedariti et al, 2022;Stern et al, 2022). Multiple studies from different research laboratories have also shown that these derived neurons not only have cellular and biochemical characteristics very similar to the neurons developed in the human brain but also are functional when transplanted into animal models and thus, may have the potential to contribute to regenerative treatment options for the disease (Byers et al, 2011;Kriks et al, 2011;Doi et al, 2014;Grealish et al, 2014;Byers et al, 2015;Hoban et al, 2020;Behl et al, 2022).…”