A lot of optimism and promise surrounds the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for a number of drug discovery and development applications. Human-derived iPSCs are thought to be more physiologically relevant and better suited for modeling disease pathophysiology and for understanding a drug’s mechanism of action. Hence, cell-based in vitro screening using iPSCs is gaining recognition as a tool for disease modeling, predicting drug efficacy, and toxicology testing. However, technical challenges exist in culturing, differentiating, and characterizing these cells, and skeptics remain unconvinced about the validity of the results obtained.
The Scientist brings together a panel of experts who will parse the hope and hype in an effort to educate the audience about the successes and caveats of using iPSCs. Attendees can interact with the experts during the live webinar by asking questions and sharing their experiences using stem cells.
DR. KENNETH S. ZARET is the Joseph Leidy Professor in the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the associate director of UPenn's Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the codirector of UPenn's Program in Epigenetics. His laboratory discovered the mechanism by which gene regulatory factors, termed “pioneer factors,” endow the competence of embryos to produce different types of cells. Zaret's laboratory also identified a dynamic signaling network that coordinately induces liver or pancreas cell fates in the embryo. The information is being used by many laboratories to direct the programming of liver and pancreatic stem cells for biomedical and therapeutic applications. Recently, his group used stem-cell technology to reprogram human pancreatic cancer cells and found that the reprogrammed cells could progress through the early stages of pancreatic cancer. The cells are being used as a means to discover marker proteins that are released from live human pancreatic cancer cells at early stages of the disease.
