Pluripotent stem cells are very popular and lots of research has been conducted to use these cells as a tool for drug discovery. My question is how many years would it theoretically safe is we could use iPS cells during the process of drug discovery?
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1$\begingroup$ iPSCs are already a common model in industry, obviously depending on what exactly you're researching. I don't have any citations, because all of the work I'm aware of is proprietary (that comes with working in industry...), but lots of companies and labs are using them right now. $\endgroup$– MattDMoMay 1, 2016 at 17:19
1 Answer
People are doing small molecule screens with stem cells right now (albeit embryonic stem cells). Probably a lot more screens of that kind are in progress behind closed doors in the pharmaceutical industry, and we can expect iPSC culturing to get better and cheaper, so sometime in the next decade we'll see them become a common model.
iPSCs will probably be an improvement on existing cell culture models, and will also allow things like the creation of cell lines for specific genetic diseases, but they wont' be a quantum leap forward for drug discovery in general.