Patient-specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells as a Platform for Disease Modeling, Drug Discovery and Precision Personalized Medicine

The breakthrough development of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology is not only revolutionizing basic stem cell science but is also spurring efforts to reprogram one somatic cell type directly into another. Induced pluripotent stem cells provide scientists with a self-renewing and, thus, unlimited, source of pluripotent cells for targeted differentiation, in principle, into the entire range of cell types found in the body. Therefore, iPSC technology and the increasingly refined abilities to differentiate iPSCs into disease-relevant mature cells has far reaching implications for understanding disease etiology and promoting drug discovery and other advances in regenerative medicine. In this review, we summarize the latest progress in the application of patient-specific iPSCs for disease modeling, drug screening and cell replacement therapy, and discuss their impact on precision personalized medicine.