Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs)—Roles in Regenerative Therapies, Disease Modelling and Drug Screening

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) offer a way to bypass ethical concerns related to using human embryonic stem cells (ESCs). iPSCs are compatible with non-invasive harvesting and can be sourced from patients with rare diseases, making them flexible for research and therapy. iPSCs have been used in modeling various diseases, including cardiac disorders, neural conditions like Alzheimer's, liver diseases, and spinal cord injuries.

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  iPSC-based disease models have been studied for cardiac channelopathies including hereditary long QT syndrome (LQTS), dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC).
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  iPSC models around cancer aid in overcoming the hurdles posed by traditional cancer cell line systems, which may lose the characteristics of the original tumor with time.
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  Advancements in iPSC models have also led researchers to be able to design autologous iPSC-based vaccine which presents a broad spectrum of tumor antigens to the immune system of the mice.