Using Stem Cells To Identify Better (And Cheaper) Drugs – Forbes

Non-destructive induced Pluripotent Stem Cells used to test new drugs:

Rubin works mostly with iPSCs, derived from real patients. If his lab can develop drugs that they can identify in a screen as candidates that might be useful, they can test them across ranges of patients –many individual patients.

“And that can pretty much only be done, practically speaking, using an iPSC approach,” he said.

“So, as an example, we discovered a compound, something we were excited about for ALS. Kevin Eggan (also at HSCI) and I collaborated to test that compound on 60 different motor neurons in parallel, using a very interesting technology we developed in my lab from live cell imaging which was required.”

via Using Stem Cells To Identify Better (And Cheaper) Drugs – Forbes.