Discussion

An attractive feature of human iPS cells is the ability to derive them from adult patients to study the cellular basis of human disease. Since iPS cells are self-renewing and pluripotent, they represent a theoretically unlimited source of patient-derived cells which can be turned into many cell types of the body. Over the last 5 years there has been an increase in the number of differentiated cells derived from iPS cells and iPS cells have been generated for a wide variety of human genetic diseases, including common disorders such as Down syndrome and polycystic kidney disease. In many instances, the patient-derived iPS cells exhibit cellular defects not observed in iPS cells from healthy patients, providing insight into the pathophysiology of the disease. During this talk examples of the utilisation of iPS cells to identify novel drugs for diseases such as ALS and Neurogenesis as well as advances in cardiotoxicity testing using iPS cells will be discussed.