iPSC Technology: Platform for Drug Discovery

Disease-specific pluripotent stem cells are a source of affected cell types for drug discovery. The ability to reprogram somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) provides a platform for generating cells from patients with different disease severities and drug metabolism responses. Although challenges remain for efficient differentiation and high-throughput scale-up, we propose that iPSCs have distinct advantages over embryonic stem cells (ESCs) for evaluating drugs by performing clinical trials on a dish.