World Stem Cells & Regenerative Medicine Congress 2010:
Invited Speaker Abstract

Human iPS cell-derived in vitro models for disease modeling: The path to a better understanding of individual biology and their utility in drug discovery and development

May 11, 2010 | London, UK
Speaker: Chris Parker, Chief Commercial Officer

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells have the ability to act as a starting material to produce any cell type from any genetic background. Providing in vitro models to understand pharmacological mechanisms in a model that can represent the diversity in human biology will provide a more predictive model to understand toxicity through the production of normal human cell types. Because iPSCs have the advantage of originating from individuals with identifiable genotypes and phenotypes, they enable the development of in vitro screening panels of ethnic diversity, targeted disease populations, and other subpopulations that will provide better mechanistic understanding of a variety of compounds and how they affect individuals differently. This presentation will discuss the power of iPSC technologies to produce human tissues easily accessible from clinical settings, the immediate and future utility of iPSCs, and associated challenges, including the industrialization and parallel processing required to reliably produce differentiated cells from numerous genetically diverse donor sources in the quantities required to drive drug discovery and predictive toxicology assessments.